


We Were Us (Before We Met)

by rochke11



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Prophecy, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-04-28 05:21:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5079427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rochke11/pseuds/rochke11
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>this isn’t just the love story of lexa and clarke.  this is the story of their lives. the story about two babies who lay in bassinets next to each other in the hospital on a stormy, June night.  the story of two girls living two completely separate lives.  the story of two lives that cross countless times. this is the story of almosts.  a love story coming full circle.  because when an old woman makes a prophecy about two baby girls, their lives made of two strings, bound to always intertwine, something magical happens.  even if it takes a few years for the tapestry to finally become visible</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue (The Prophecy)

**Author's Note:**

> i WAS going to wait until I finished Strangers Don't Write (Love) Letters, but I couldn't help myself. This is only a short chapter because it's the prologue, chapter 1 (when it comes) will be normal length

It was mid-January and the wind is whipped in the biting cold New York storm. A young girl braved the storm, sixteen and both brave and scared. Besides the sounds of the storm, the city was unusually quiet and the young girl barely passed a single soul as she wandered off the subway, making her way through Chinatown.

She walked passed the store front twice before noticing it. She double checked the address written on a scrap piece of paper before letting herself in.

A bell chimed as she opened the door, the wind from outside causing the door to slam shut behind her. The young girl loosened her hand-knit scarf and took in her surroundings. The small shop was full of odds and ends. Everything from figurines to crystal balls to tarot cars and dream catchers.

“Can I help you?” an older woman asked, causing the girl to jump slightly in surprise.

The girl looked around until she finally caught sight of the eccentric looking woman standing behind the counter. “Uhm, yeah,” she muttered. “I have an appointment?”

“Of course!” the woman nodded. She lifted up her arms and gestured for the younger girl to follow her into the back room.

The girl hesitantly followed, her ‘stranger danger’ instincts begging for her to turn around and leave, but the flutter in her stomach begged her to stay. So she listened to the growing form and followed the woman to the back of the store, where she found herself in a warmly lit room.

She took a seat opposite the older woman, and after only a brief moment of silence, the older woman spoke. “You aren’t here for yourself, are you?”

The girl didn’t respond, instead she folded her hands over the slight bulge of her stomach.

“She’s going to be great,” the eccentric woman offered the younger girl a reassuring smile.

At the sound of the pronoun used, the pregnant girl’s face lit up. “It’s a girl?” she asked hopefully. The woman nodded. “I’m not sure what to do. I can’t keep her. I’m only sixteen.”

“You’ll make the right decision.”

“How do you know?”

“Do you mind?” the woman asked as she stood up and knelt beside the girl, gesturing to her stomach. 

The girl shrugged out of her heavy winter coat, showing off the slight bump. She gestured to it and allowed the other woman to place her warm hands over her thin sweater on the bump.

“Your girl will know great loss,” the woman spoke, causing the girl to intake slightly. Not deterred, the woman continued with her prophesying. “She is strong though. Strong of will and soul. She is a fighter.”

The girl shifted her gaze from the woman to her stomach. “Will she be happy?”

“There will be both times of hardship and times of happiness. There is one thing though, that will bring your daughter nothing but happiness. Not a thing though, no. A girl. A girl whose soul is entangled with hers. Their paths will cross countless times. They will know each other their entire lives, but not meet until the time is right. A soulmate can be either a curse or a blessing. For both your daughter and her soulmate, they will be each other’s blessings.”

“I don’t understand, she’ll know her her entire life, but not meet her?”

“Sometimes prophecies aren’t always clear.”

“I understand,” the girl nodded.

“Would you like to hear anything about yourself?” the woman asked. “I see some things of great important in your future.”

“No!” the girl interrupted vehemently. “I don’t want to know what my future entails. I don’t want that burden.”

“But knowing your daughter’s fortune is different?”

“Yes,” she nodded assuredly. “I won’t be able to see her grow up, so I want something to hold on to.”

The woman’s look softened and she prepared to offer the girl one last ounce of knowledge. “Her parents will name her Alexandria. She will be called Lexa. But her soulmate? The girl whose life path she is so entangled with? She will call her something that no one else ever will.”

“And what’s that?” the girl asked, her eyes alight in anticipation.

“I’m not sure,” the woman answered honestly with a shake of her head. “I can’t see that. Whatever it is though, it’ll change everything for your girl.”


	2. The First Ten Years

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They started their lives just feet away from each other, but oceans soon separated them. It wasn't long before their paths crossed again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well here it is, the real first chapter. I hope you enjoy it!

Jake Griffin was a worrier. This, of course, was a fact that he vehemently denied whenever his wife, Abby, brought it up. Jake’s worrying nature could be best explained by his actions on July 1st, 1993.

His wife was 41 weeks pregnant and after days of asking her how she felt every hour, and being told to “stop worrying, I’m a doctor, just trust me,” she finally announced to him that it was time. Their baby was coming. Abby, the more calm and composed half of the couple, insisted that she be the one who drove them to the hospital after watching Jake’s hands shake as he picked up the hospital bag from the front hall. Jake didn’t try and fight his wife on the matter.

It wasn’t until Abby was settled into a hospital bed just under an hour later that the complications started to arise. There were four other women in labor on the floor at the same time as Abby and only one OB-GYN on call. Luckily though, it was Abby’s doctor and friend from medical school - Callie Cartwig.

Abby’s labor progressed normally until exactly eight pm, around two hours after being admitted. It was at that point that her baby’s heartbeat began to falter. Something was wrong. Dr. Cartwig had just finished delivering a baby boy across the hall and had immediately assessed the situation with Abby Griffin. It was quickly decided that Abby would have to have an emergency c-section.

Nurses were pulling Abby’s hospital bed into the hallway when Jake, in his stressed and worried state, somehow tripped over the cord to the fetal heart monitor machine, landing with his weight entirely on his left wrist. Even in the chaotic room, nearly everyone heard it crack.

“I’m fine! I’m fine!” Jake announced as he stood up, gingerly cradling his wrist. “Let’s go to the operating - okay shit that really hurt. Fuck. Yeah, I’m in a bit of pain.”

Jake glanced at his wife who was looking at him in a way that reminded him that she was about to go into surgery to bring their child into the world.

Dr. Cartwig sighed, never having understood why Abby had married the engineer in the first place. “Nurse Miller, will you take Mr. Griffin down to ortho while I get Mrs. Griffin to the OR?”

The nurse nodded and gestured for Jake to follow him.

“I need to be there for my wife though!” he insisted.

“I’ll be fine Jake,” Abby responded. “You need to make sure you get that wrist set and in a cast so that you can help with this baby once I get out of surgery.”

Jake frowned, but nodded in agreement.

Half an hour later, Jake returned to the waiting area outside the surgical ward of the maternity floor, wearing a brand new cast. He had just sat down on an uncomfortable, plastic chair when Dr. Cartwig ran out of the operating room.

“Callie!” Jake exclaimed, dropping the title on his wife’s doctor’s name. “What’s going on?”

Callie whipped her head around, but was unable to answer Jake’s question before a hospital bed came wheeling its way between the them at an alarming speed. Lying on the bed was a brunette who couldn’t have been much older than sixteen, drenched in sweat and quickly losing consciousness. Her stomach seemed protruded from her frail, thin body. Though it took up most of the girl’s frame, it still seemed smaller than Abby’s was and any passerby could tell that something was wrong.

Jake quickly took a step back and let Dr. Cartwig approach the teen in the bed, listening as the nurses spoke words that even Jake understood, “six weeks early” “parents not responding” “baby’s father unknown” “adoptive parents arriving shortly”. It wasn’t until the hospital bed was halfway through the doors to the operating ward that Jake heard the word, “She’s crashing! If we don’t get this baby out of her, we’ll lose them both.”

Jake always considered himself to be more spiritual than religious, but in that moment, it was his Catholic upbringing that reared its head in him. He offered a silent prayer for the safety young girl and her child along with his wife and child.

Shortly after the young girl and Dr. Carwig disappeared, a large man with an impressive beard joined Jake in the waiting area.

“Is this the waiting area for maternity?” the man asked.

“Yes,” Jake nodded. Jake noticed the tell-tale signs of a father-to-be in the man, knowing he was exhibiting nervousness himself, so he decided to strike up a conversation. “So is this your first?” he asked.

The man jerked his head up, surprised to find Jake addressing him. He nodded. “I was just in the middle of painting the baby’s room when I got the call. My partner and I are adopting, but the birth mom wasn’t due for another six weeks.”

Jake immediately matched the young girl losing consciousness on the hospital bed to the man sitting distraught across from him.

“Is anyone ever ready to become a parent?” Jake teased, hoping a bit of humor would help with the man across from him.

“She was the first birthmother who even looked twice at our file. Most women don’t exactly want to give their kid up to two men,” he shrugged, wringing his hands together. “And of course we want this baby more than anything, but she’s a good girl too, the last thing I want is for anything bad to happen to her either. And my partner is stuck in traffic on his way here from work and I have no idea when he’ll be here.”

Jake took a deep breath and as he did so, he noticed a television above his head. A baseball game was playing. He stood up and crossed the room, taking the empty seat beside the man. This man needed to take his mind off of what he couldn’t control and so did Jake.

“Jake Griffin, Yankees fan,” he introduced himself, nodding his head towards the game playing opposite them.

“Gustus Woods, Mets fan,” the man responded with a slight chuckle.

Jake Griffin and Gustus Woods sat beside each other, talking about a sports game neither would care about in a few hours. They were each other’s distraction while they waited for the news that would change both of their lives entirely, and for the better. Little did they know at the time, that their happenstance meeting would not be their last.

On July 1st 1993, Dr. Callie Cartwig delivered five children; three boys and two girls. She performed two c-sections that day. The c-sections were performed in rooms across the hall from each other, Dr. Cartwig alternating between the two rooms.

Alexandria Rosslyn Woods was born at 9:31 pm that night. Her adoption paperwork signed by Gustus and Ryder Woods the next morning. She spent her first two nights in the neonatal intensive care unit and went home with her fathers six days later.

Clarke Elizabeth Griffin was born at 9:47 pm that night. Her parents, Jake and Abby Griffin took her home the next afternoon.

****

Clarke Griffin lived the first five years of her life on the Upper East Side of New York City until her parents finally decided to move to the suburbs, moving their family to Connecticut where Abby was hired as a general surgery attending surgeon. Clarke was quickly enrolled into a co-ed prep school where she met the son of the state’s governor, Thelonious Jaha.

Starting from the first day of kindergarten, Clarke Griffin and Wells Jaha were in separable. The Jahas and Griffins would often joke that when the two kids reached puberty they’d either decide that the other had cooties and they couldn’t be friends anymore, or they’d end up becoming childhood sweethearts, eventually falling in love and getting married.

Clarke and Wells were seven when Jake first taught them how to play chess. They were immediately hooked. The two best friends were the only second graders in the chess club normally reserved for fourth and fifth graders. And they were the best.

When other kids their age were out riding bikes or smacking their ankles with their Razor scooters, Wells and Clarke were inside playing chess or watching football with Thelonious and Jake. They never felt left out when the rest of their peers had birthday parties at bowling alleys or laser tag and didn’t invite them because they had each other and they were best friends. That’s all that mattered.

Clarke’s best friend’s life changed their second week of third grade on a day that changed not just his life and not just Clarke’s, but the entire nation’s.

It was a Tuesday when Clarke heard her and Wells’ names called over the loudspeaker, telling them to head to the front office, that they were getting picked up early. Clarke didn’t know what to think, but she secretly hoped their parents were taking them on a surprise trip to Disney World. Wells was upset that they were going to miss minute madness for their multiplication tables.

Jake picked the two friends up and took them back to the Griffins’ house. It wasn’t until they walked inside that Jake broke the news to them. Abby was waiting on standby at the hospital in case they transferred patients to Connecticut and Thelonious was at the state capitol, waiting to hear anything.

What Jake hadn’t realized was that while he sat Clarke and Wells down at the kitchen table to tell them why he had pulled them out of school early, the television was on behind him. The news was playing on the channel Jake had been watching before he picked the kids up.

“Daddy!” Clarke exclaimed just as Jake was about to tell them what was happening so close to them. She pointed behind him at the television. Jake turned around just in time to see the first tower crumble to the ground, the same tower where Wells’ mother had been working for four years.

Clarke held her best friend’s hand throughout the entirety of his mother’s funeral. She promised to never let go. Because that’s what best friends are for.

Wells’ mother had been like a second mother to Clarke, but she held her head high and let Wells cry for the both of them, because that’s what best friends do. They stand silently beside their friend in pain and protect them from whatever they can.

They were in fourth grade when their teacher announced that they would be receiving pen pals with nine-year-olds like them, but nine-year-olds from Hong Kong. Their pen pals were attending an English speaking school in Hong Kong, many of whom were international students who had already moved around a lot in their lives and were used to writing letters to friends.

They picked names out of a hat to write to. Both teachers on opposite sides of the world had decided to have each of their students pick a nickname. It was the first year of the pen pal program and for safety reasons they didn’t want the kids to use their real names. Just in case.

“Who’d you get?” Clarke asked, leaning over to look at the piece of paper Wells was unfolding on his desk beside him.

“Someone named Goggles. That’s a dumb nickname,” he laughed.

“So is King,” Clarke retorted.

“The king is the most important chess piece.”

“I think the Queen is more important,” Clarke insisted, bringing up an often fought debate between the two friends.

“Whatever, so who did you get?” Wells asked.

“Heda,” Clarke read from her slip of paper. “That’s a weird name. I wonder if it’s a boy or a girl.”

Wells shrugged and pulled out two pieces of looseleaf, handing one to Clarke. You can ask in your letter.

Clarke nodded and wrote her letter to her pen pal in slightly messy handwriting.

> _Heda,_
> 
> _Hi! My name is Grandmaster. Well, not really, but it’s the nickname I chose. Do you know what it means? Well it is the highest level of chess player. I want to be a chess grandmaster one day. Or an artist. Or a doctor like my mom. What do you want to be when you grow up? What is Hong Kong like? Do you speak Chinese?_
> 
> _Grandmaster_
> 
> _PS: are you a boy or a girl?_

****

By the time Lexa Woods was ten, she’d lived in four different countries. She was born in New York and moved in England before she learned to walk. She lived there for two years before she moved to Canada. Lexa's family lived in Canada for eight months before moving to Belgium. At age six she moved to Hong Kong. It was in Hong Kong that she met the Anya Forest.

Like the Woods family, the Forests moved around a lot. Ryder Woods was an ambassador, causing his constant traveling while Luna Forest, Anya’s mother, was a business woman who worked for a highly successful computer company.

Anya was two years older than Lexa, but they became instant friends. Anya very much enjoyed the way Lexa would follow her around and listen to all her worldly wisdom.

So when Lexa received a letter from her pen pal in fourth grade, telling her about how she was a chess player, Lexa immediately went to Anya.

“Can you teach me how to play chess?” Lexa asked the older girl.

“Chess is lame,” the eleven-year-old retorted. “How about I teach you how to fence instead?

Lexa nodded and agreed, but secretly asked her fathers later that night how to play. She found the game interesting, but it was fencing with Anya that Lexa fell in love with.

Every day after school, Anya and Lexa would fence together in one of the empty dance studios at their international school. Gustus would pick both Anya and Lexa up after they practiced. He would drop Anya off, then take Lexa home.

Lexa would spend her evenings doing homework, then would have a family dinner with her dads. Lexa loved Hong Kong and her life there was perfect.

The week before fourth grade ended, however, Gustus and Ryder broke the news to Lexa that they would be moving back to the United States, likely permanently. Lexa took the news as well as any near ten-year-old who was being forced to move away from the place she'd loved for the past four years.

Lexa was just about ready to leave and call Anya to tell her the bad news when her parents explained to her that there was something else. They handed her a wrapped present.

Confused, Lexa hesitantly removed the wrapping paper from the gift, revealing a box. Lexa scrunched her brow in continued confusion, causing her glasses to fall down her nose. Gustus made a mental note to get his daughter's glasses tightened as he watched her push them back into place before opening the box.

Lexa pulled out the t-shirt and looked down at it in confusion. After reading the words on it upside down, she quickly turned the shirt around and gasped in surprise.

“Is this a joke?” Lexa asked in surprise.

“No, definitely not a joke,” Ryder laughed in response.

Lexa grinned as she pulled the t-shirt over her head, messing up her curly brown hair, but not caring in the slightest. It may have been a bit tacky, but the shirt that said “Future Big Sister,” looked better on Lexa than her uniform did. Although that could have been as the result of the glow the girl seemed to be emitting.

That night, after having a long conversation with Anya, Lexa decided to send one last letter to her pen pal before she would lose the connection she had at her school. She and “Grandmaster” had already exchanged a handful of letters through the school and Lexa knew she would be sad to let the connection go.

> _Grandmaster,_
> 
> _I am moving back to the United States! I’m sad because now I have to leave my friends here, but my Dads told me today that I’m going to be a big sister when we get back to the USA. I’m an only child like you said you are, but I always wanted a younger brother or sister, even though they will be ten years younger than me._
> 
> _Anyway, I don’t know my address yet, do you have an email? Mine is heda93@hotmail.com, I hope you email me soon._
> 
> _Heda_

A week later, Lexa received an email from grandmasterartist@aol.com.

> _Hi!_
> 
> _My mom and dad set up this email address just so I could email you! That’s so cool that you are going to be a big sister, I’m very jealous! Is your mom getting really fat? My aunt got really fat before my cousin was born._
> 
> _Bye!_

After reading the email, Lexa decided not to respond. She didn’t know how best to tell her pen pal that she didn’t have a mom. Sure, it was 2003 and people were more okay with gay parents, but Lexa had grown up knowing that sometimes people didn’t understand that she had two dads and she didn’t know how to explain it over email. She told herself she’d ask Anya how she should respond, but in the craziness with move, she forgot.

The Woods family moved into a three bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side of New York City two weeks before Lexa turned ten. Two months later, they welcomed newborn Tris into their home and Lexa became a big sister. She forgot all about her pen pal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm super excited about this fic and I have a LOT planned for it. As I continue to get to work on the next chapter, feel free to talk to me about it and ask any questions you have! I probably won't reveal too much, but if you ask the right questions you might get some answers out of me and maybe even some deleted scenes/moments.
> 
> you can find me at:
> 
> madgirlbackhome.tumblr.com


	3. Always an Almost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke and Lexa work their way through middle school and freshman year of high school. Clarke meets Octavia and Lexa makes some friends. Gustus and Jake reunite and Halloween happens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've decided that my update days are going to be Wednesdays and Sundays if you're all cool with that

Lexa started fifth grade at a private school where, for the first time ever, she was the only student who had grown up in multiple places around the globe. For the first time ever, she was also attending an all-girl’s school.

The Kru Schools were a network of schools started by nuns in France over two hundred years ago. The network had spread across the globe with each school bearing similarities to the others, but each also slightly different. In New York City, The Kru School was known as the Trikru School for Girls.

The first day of fifth grade, wearing her kilt and polo, Lexa couldn’t help but notice how out of place she was. All of her classmates had grown up in the city and had been attending Trikru their entire lives. They were all friends with each other and weren’t afraid to mark Lexa immediately as the “weird new girl”. Lexa missed Anya terribly.

Each day, Lexa would go home from school and tell her Dads how much she loved her new school. She didn’t want them to feel bad about moving her away from her friends. Nobody was outwardly mean to Lexa at school, but they never included her in any of their friend groups.

The only time anyone ever made fun of Lexa to her face was when Ryder picked her up from school one day, instead of Gustus. Caris Williams overheard Lexa call Ryder, “Papa” put two and two together, realizing that Lexa had two fathers. It wasn’t long before Caris’ gaggle of friends started calling Lexa a freak of nature and accusing her of being against God’s will.

By the end of fifth grade, however, the taunts stopped after Caris’ mom came out as a lesbian and left her father for her father’s secretary.

Lexa skipped the last day of fifth grade. Gustus had gotten tickets as an early birthday present for Lexa to a Yankees-Mets game. Needless to say, Lexa much preferred going to the game over the last day of school.

By the end of the seventh inning, the score was tied at 1-1. Both Lexa and Gustus’ stomachs were growling so they decided to head to the hot dog stand just outside of their seating section.

The line was long, and Lexa was growing impatient. She turned to her father, ready to complain to him, when she noticed that he was strangely focused on the man in front of them in line.

“Dad!” Lexa exclaimed, shaking Gustus out of his reverie.

“One second Lex,” Gustus responded before tapping on the man’s shoulder. “Excuse me?”

The man turned around and narrowed his eyes at Gustus. “Why do I recognize you?” the man asked.

“I was just about to ask you the same thing,” Gustus chuckled in response.

“You didn’t go to Cornell, did you?” the man asked. Gustus shook his head. The man paused to think, then looked down at Lexa. Seeing Lexa seemed to spark something in him, as he then broke out into a large smile. “Your birthday doesn’t happen to be July 1st, 1993, does it?” he asked.

Lexa looked up at her father, confused. She felt a little uncomfortable that the random man knew her birthday. While the man’s words elicited confusion from Lexa, they brought explanation to Gustus. His face lit up.

“The hospital,” Gustus nodded. “We were in the waiting room together, weren’t we? Sorry, I don’t remember your name. I’m Gustus.”

“Jake, Jake Griffin,” the man shook Gustus’ hand. “Now what are the odds of us running into each other again?”

“Well it is a Mets-Yankees game,” Gustus laughed, remembering the fact that they had shared that they cheered for different teams.

“Good point,” Jake nodded. “So how have you been the past eleven years?”

“Pretty good,” Gustus nodded. “We’ve been moving around a lot, but finally moved back to the city about a year ago. This one has a little sister now.” Gustus ruffled the hair on top of his daughter’s head. Lexa frowned. “How about you?”

“All good here too,” Jake nodded. “We just have Clarke though, that’s my daughter. Who, in fact, is around here somewhere.” He spun around in search of his daughter. In the distance, he spotted a short girl with blonde hair paying for an ice cream cone. “Clarke!” he yelled. The girl, however, didn’t seem to hear her father and returned to their seats.

“Bummer,” Gustus shook his head. Lexa went on her tiptoes and craned her neck to see if she could see the girl with her same birthday, but was too short to see over the heads of the wandering baseball fans.

“She’s probably wondering where I wandered off to,” Jake shook his head. “It was good to see you.”

“You too,” Gustus returned, remembering the gratitude he’d felt for the man who calmed him down while he waited otherwise alone for news of his daughter’s birth.

Jake stepped away from Gustus to face his daughter. “So your Dad is a Mets fan, how about you?”

“Mets, duh,” Lexa shook her head. “The Yankees are SO overrated.” Both Gustus and Jake laughed at Lexa’s response.

“I may not agree with you, but I’m glad you have your convictions Miss. Woods,” Jake responded, finally remembering the last name Gustus had given him years earlier.

“Lexa,” the brunette responded. “That’s my name.”

“Well Lexa,” Jake extended a hand, “It was a pleasure to meet you. And when the Yankees win, try not to take it personally.”

Lexa was raised to be polite, so she shook Jake’s hand, but she was also a child and knew that Jake was just teasing her, so she stuck her tongue out at him.

Jake laughed in response and gave a wave to Gustus before walking off in search of his daughter. Gustus marveled at how extraordinary it was that he had run into Jake again. Jake marveled at the same as he returned to his daughter.

Gustus and Jake ran into each other one last time in Times Square two years later. It was there that they had a longer conversation, this time not about baseball, but rather about schools. Gustus went on about how great the academics were at the Trikru school, so much so that Jake researched the Kru schools and learned that one of the more prestigious schools in his area of Connecticut, Skaikru School was part of the same network.

Gustus and Jake talked about their daughters that day, both expecting to never see each other again, but joking that sheer luck would bring them back together again. It didn’t.

That day at Yankee Stadium was the first time second time Gustus met Jake. It was the first time Lexa Woods met her future father-in-law. It was also the last.

 

* * *

 

By the time Clarke Griffin made it to middle school, she realized that she had only one friend. It wasn’t that big of a deal, Wells was a great friend, but she was also getting to the age where a girl needs a few good girl friends.

Jake and Clarke brainstormed the problem together, knowing that she was still attending the same school with the same people had been with in elementary school. They decided that Clarke should try playing a sport, so she decided on lacrosse. She joined the town league so that she could meet some girls from her town, many of whom didn’t attend private school.

She didn’t end up making any friends, as all her teammates had joined the team with friends they already had. In fact, Clarke ended up making an enemy of one girl, Octavia Blake, after she accidentally nailed a ball at the brunette, giving her a concussion. While Clarke didn’t make any friends on the team, she did find a love for the sport of lacrosse, and that was just as good.

At the start of eighth grade, Jake and Abby sat Clarke down to discuss what she wanted to do for high school. Her current school ended in eighth grade so she would need to start applying to private high schools or decide if she wanted to try public schools.

It was Jake who suggested the Skaikru School. Unlike the other network schools, it was a co-ed school. The school was well known and had incredibly good ratings. After shadowing a current student, Clarke decided that she wanted to go.

She brought the school up to Wells, but for the first time the two best friends separated, Wells choosing to go to a private all-boys school.

Freshman year started with a surprise to Clarke. She was surrounded by girls and boys who had never known her as the weird girl who plays chess with the governor’s son. Puberty was hitting Clarke in the best way possible and for some reason everyone wanted to be her friend.

The biggest surprise to Clarke, however, was befriending Octavia Blake. In middle school, Octavia had been angry at the world and a bit of a brute on the lacrosse field. In high school, she was no different. The only difference now was that Octavia was no longer around her public school friends and was friendless and out of place in the private school. Her only friend was her older brother, Bellamy, who was also a new student, but new as a junior.

Clarke could tell that the Blakes were hiding something, but she wasn’t one to pry. She had secrets of her own, ones she was just discovering. Like how great she thought Maya Vie’s legs looked in her skirt.

Befriending Octavia Blake wasn’t a choice, it just happened after they both earned a detention the second week of freshman year. Octavia had earned hers for skipping class, Clarke for already being late to school six times. Though to be fair, that was Abby’s fault.

Clarke was the one who had broken the silence as they sat in the empty classroom after school during their detention, the only ones in the room.

“So are you planning on trying out for lacrosse?” she asked the angry brunette.

“Obviously,” Octavia scoffed in response. “I’m hoping to make varsity, if I don’t get another concussion anyway.”

Clarke knew that Octavia wasn’t exactly acting invitingly, but she couldn’t help but let out a laugh. Moments later, Octavia joined her. The teacher on detention duty heard them from outside the room and came in to reprimand them.

This, of course, just caused them to laugh even louder.

From that day forward, Clarke finally had a girl friend. She never expected to become friends with Octavia Blake, nor did the rest of the girls in her grade who suddenly decided that Clarke’s choice in friend made her not worthy of being one of the “popular” kids. Neither Clarke nor Octavia minded though.

Two months into freshman year, Clarke and Octavia realized that they were too old to go trick-or-treating any more. That being said, they weren’t ready to give up wearing costumes, so they enlisted Bellamy and Wells to join them in a group costume. The four of them were the Scooby Gang. Not from Scooby-doo though, no, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Clarke went as Buffy, Octavia as Willow, Wells as Xander and Bellamy as Giles. Wells and Bellamy had flipped back and forth on who they wanted to be, but in the end it was decided that while Wells had a great British accent, Bellamy was the most mom-like of the group and therefore best suited as Giles.

Because Bellamy was sixteen while the rest of them were fourteen, he was able to drive the group to a well-known haunted house across the state border in New York.

Clarke hadn’t really thought through the fact that the haunted house that had been all over the news for how great in was would be especially crowded on Halloween night. They ended up waiting in line for tickets for half an hour, then for another hour in line to actually get into the house until it was finally their turn.

At the door the group was told that the house was a maze and that part of the experience was trying to figure out how to get out. The actors inside were also allowed to separate groups, but if they said the safe word “mercy” they would immediately be allowed to exit the house through a back door.

Needless to say, the four made a pact not to use the safe word.

The first room they entered was a classic creepy room filled with old dolls that looked like something out of a horror film. The group stayed strong though and barely flinched when the clown in the corner reached out at them.

After they left the room, they found themselves at a fork and decided to go left. They were halfway down the hallway when they heard the sound of a chainsaw and an actor wearing a mask started coming towards them holding the chainsaw high. Bellamy gave a high-pitched shriek and was the first to turn and run, Wells close behind them.

“I’m not scared, are you Clarke?” Octavia asked, turning to her friend. Clarke shook her head, but she was a little scared. Clarke had learned a lot about Octavia in the two months they had been friends. She’d learned that the brunette was carefree at her core and saw the beauty in everything, but also that something had caused her to learn how to be strong at a very young age.

The actor with the chainsaw picked up his speed and that was when Octavia and Clarke looked at each other quickly before sprinting past past the actor, continuing down the hallway.

At this point they realized they’d probably lost Wells and Bellamy, but at least they still had each other. That is, until a teen actor dressed as Little Red Riding Hood with bite marks as make-up, dragged Octavia away from Clarke.

Clarke frantically searched around for any of her friends, running through a room filled very realistic spider webs.

She saw a figure up ahead that looked a lot like Bellamy with a girl running behind him. It was dark and she could only see shadows so she assumed Octavia had found her brother.

“Wait!” Clarke yelled.

She followed the two into the next room only to discover that the next room was pitch black. Clarke reached an arm out and brushed against something sticky. She yelped and pulled back her arm. She heard someone chuckle just ahead of her and guessed it was Octavia.

Clarke took a risk and extended her arms out in front of her, walking forward until they hit the back of the girl she assumed to be Octavia. The moment Clarke touched the girl’s shoulder a cackling sound echoed throughout the room causing Clarke to quickly grasp the girl’s hand.

The hand was slightly sweaty, but Clarke barely noticed that. What she noticed was how perfectly her hand fit in the other girl’s. When her heart skipped a beat, it wasn’t out of fright, but rather because when the girl gave her hand a slight squeeze, electricity seemed to run through her veins.

The girl started walking forward and Clarke silently followed, still grasping her hand. The two felt their way to the exit in the dark. The light was blinding when they pushed the door open and the first thing Clarke saw after her vision cleared was Octavia waving at Clarke.

Clarke realized immediately that it wasn’t her friend’s hand she was holding and quickly dropped it, face burning with embarrassment as she ran towards Octavia. What Clarke didn’t realize, what she had no way of knowing, was that the hand she had been holding was one she would hold again in several years, and would hold for years to come until the day Lexa Woods died in her sleep at the age of 94, lying in bed with her wife, hands grasped.

 

* * *

 

When Lexa started high school, Caris Williams and her friends all left for boarding school and Lexa found a few friends with the new girls that started at Trikru School for Girls, most notably Echo, Emori and Niylah. Lexa was also still staying in good contact with Anya who now lived in Australia.

The fall of Lexa’s freshman year also brought the Woods family new neighbors in the form of recently divorced Indra Washington, the Columbia lacrosse coach, and her son Lincoln. Lincoln was only a year older than Lexa and the two became great friends.

Lincoln was the one who insisted that Lexa attend the end of year dance at his all-boys school to celebrate the end of her freshman year.

Lexa knew that half the reason Lincoln wanted Lexa to come was because she would bring Echo, Emori and Niylah with her and he had a not-so-subtle crush on Emori. It wasn’t until he promised to bring his cousin, however, that Lexa had agreed.

Lincoln had told Lexa all about his cousin and she had seen pictures of the girl. She also knew that she was the first girl in her grade to come out as a lesbian. Lexa herself had never come out, but somehow everyone always knew. Maybe the taunts from fifth grade had stuck, but it had actually made life easier for Lexa, never having to officially come out. Her dads had asked her several times over the years if she had crushes on anyone, never specifying a gender, simply prying the way parents do, but it wasn’t until the week before the dance that Lexa finally gave them a response.

“Lincoln is bringing his cousin to the dance and she’s really pretty and also a lesbian, but I haven’t actually ever met her before.”

Ryder and Gustus grinned at each other, both having guessed right that their daughter was as gay as they were.

So the night of the dance Ryder and Gustus helped their daughter get ready and calmed her nerves while four and a half year old Tris tried her best to help by letting Lexa hold her favorite stuffed animal.

Across the state line, Clarke was also getting ready for a school dance. The same dance, in fact. Everyone had her school had been invited to the dance as well and neither she nor Octavia ever missed a dance.

Both Clarke and Octavia were doing each other’s make-up in Clarke’s bathroom while Jake and Abby drove across town to pick up Wells. Clarke and her two best friends were going to take the train into the city together to the boys school where the dance was being held. It was the first time she was being allowed to take the train without an adult.

Lexa met Niylah, Echo and Emori at their favorite diner for dinner before the dance. Emori was clearly just as excited as Lincoln was that they would both be at the dance. Niylah and Echo were happy to just have a good time, Niylah admitting that she wasn’t sure if she liked guys, girls or both. None of them were surprised when Lexa told them about Lincoln’s cousin.

The train from Clarke’s town in Connecticut to the city was supposed to leave at 8:30 pm, so Clarke and Octavia were ready by just after eight, waiting in the Griffin’s kitchen as they munched on pizza. Octavia insisted she could eat whatever she wanted because of the workout she got on the varsity lacrosse team. Clarke insisted she could eat as much as she wanted because she wanted to. She had been cut from the lacrosse team during tryouts, but hadn’t been too bothered by it after realizing she enjoyed watching the game more than actually playing it.

Across town, Wells had just got into the car of his best friend’s parents, the couple who was basically his second set of parents. Abby was like a mother to him after the loss of his own mother, as was Jake. He didn’t notice that Abby smelled faintly of whiskey, something Jake hadn’t noticed either as his wife had gotten into the driver’s seat. Wells was too busy rehearsing the words he’d tell Clarke later that night, admitting that he was in love with her.

Lexa and her friends are their weights in burgers and ice cream. All four girls were on the JV lacrosse team and very much in shape, but also always hungry.

At 8:15 pm Abby realized that she would be cutting it close picking up Octavia and Clarke to take them with Wells to the train, so she picked up her speed. Neither Jake nor Wells noticed as they were too busy talking about what steps Wells would take to make sure he was safe getting into the city with the girls.

At 8:16 pm Lexa and her friends settled the bill and started heading across town to Lincoln’s school.

At 8:17 pm, Abby sped through a light as it turned red, and swerving to avoid a car coming from her right, crashing right into oncoming traffic.

At 8:18 pm, Lincoln texted Lexa to let her know that his cousin hadn’t arrived yet, but that she was probably on her way.

At 8:19 pm, Jake saw blood around him and placed a hand on his head, finding the source of the bleeding. He looked first over at his wife and saw shock on her face, but no blood. Somehow it wasn’t the blood he smelled, but the whiskey. And he made a choice.

At 8:20 pm, Lexa tripped over her heel, she hated heels, and causing her and her friends to miss a subway, so they waited on the platform for the next one.

At 8:21 pm, Clarke called her dad’s cellphone to ask if they were almost at the house, but he didn’t pick up.

At 8:22 pm, Lexa placed a braid in Niylah’s hair.

At 8:23 pm, Jake forced Abby and Wells out of the car after seeing they were uninjured. Abby placed pressure on his wound.

At 8:24 pm, Lexa and her friends boarded the subway.

At 8:25 pm, Clarke called Wells, who didn’t pick up his phone and ranted at Octavia about how they were going to miss the train.

At 8:26 pm, Lexa started to feel nervous again about meeting Lincoln’s cousin.

At 8:27 pm, an ambulance arrived at the site of the crash. Jake told the paramedics that he had been driving. Wells and Abby nodded in agreement. He collapsed to the ground before the paramedics could get him on a stretcher.

At 8:28 pm, Jake was on a stretcher in the ambulance.

At 8:29 pm, Clarke called Abby, but it was Wells who picked up after Abby handed him the phone so she could go with Jake in the ambulance.

At 8:30 pm, Bellamy Blake received a call from his sister and asked their foster parents if he could borrow a car to pick up Wells from the site of the accident and bring Clarke to the hospital.

At 8:31 pm, Lexa stepped off the subway and started walking the two blocks from the subway stop to her neighbor’s school.

At 8:32 pm, Jake’s heart stopped and was restarted, his brain started to swell.

At 8:35 pm, Wells was in the car with Bellamy and they came to a stop in front of the Griffin house. Octavia and Clarke ran out in their heels and hopped in.

At 8:39 pm, Lexa signed herself into the dance and started to look around for Lincoln.

At 8:45 pm, Jake was brought into the operating room to try and relieve the pressure on his brain.

At 8:49 pm, Clarke found her mother in the waiting room and fell crying into her arms.

At 8:56 pm, Lincoln received a text from his cousin saying that she’d arrived while Lexa and Niylah belted out the words to Soulja Boy.

At 9:01 pm, Jake Griffin was pronounced dead.

At 9:03 pm, Jake’s doctor came out and broke the news to Abby and Clarke.

At 9:04 pm, Clarke yelled at Wells through tears, blaming him. If her parents hadn’t gone to pick him up, Jake would still be alive.

At 9:05 pm, Wells decided to take the blame for Abby, because he knew that Clarke would hate her mother for killing her father. If there was one thing Wells knew, it was that you did whatever you could for your best friend, even that meant accepting her hate if it meant she could still have a mother to love.

At 9:07 pm, Lincoln introduced Lexa to his cousin, Costia Washington.

At 10:32 pm, Lexa had her first kiss.

At 10:32 pm, cried herself to sleep in her mom’s arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Those two! Gosh darn they keep ALMOST meeting! Can't wait to hear your thoughts :D
> 
> madgirlbackhome.tumblr.com


	4. Reckless in Life/Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke doesn't handle Jake's death well, Lexa handles love very well. The Grandmaster and Heda communicate again.

When Clarke Griffin turned fifteen, she was growing reckless. When Lexa Woods turned fifteen, she was falling recklessly in love.

Clarke had her first drink of alcohol two weeks after her father’s funeral. School had just gotten out and the rising seniors, Bellamy’s class, were hosting parties nearly every day. Despite not being the most popular kid in his grade, Bellamy was invited to all the parties, which by association meant that Clarke and Octavia were as well.

Clarke didn’t let herself get drunk at the first party, but she did at the second. And every party following it that summer. Octavia joined Clarke in her drunken nights while Bellamy watched over both of them, officially taking Clarke under his wing as a second sister.

On the Fourth of July, Clarke drunkenly admitted to Octavia that that she hadn’t had her first kiss yet. Clarke had expected her best friend to laugh at her, but she didn’t.

“You deserve to have your first kiss to be from some one who loves you,” Octavia stated.

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Clarke slurred in response.

“It should be,” Octavia insisted. If Clarke had been sober, then she might have asked Octavia to elaborate, or maybe she would have asked who Octavia’s first kiss had been, but she was well past tipsy at that point. Maybe if Clarke had been sober, then she would have been as surprised as she was when Octavia pressed her lips to hers.

The two girls moved their mouths against each other, the kiss lasting just a few moments longer than necessary for it to have counted as a first kiss. It was after Clarke pulled away from her best friend and looked at her with heavy lidded eyes that she knew she most definitely wasn’t straight.

Clarke lost her virginity to a senior on the football team during a Labor Day party. She barely remembered it, she just remembered it hurting and she remembered calling Bellamy immediately after to come pick her up. He didn’t ask her what had happened, instead he just drove her back to his house to where she lay for hours in Octavia’s bed with her best friend.

She stopped playing chess. When Sophomore year began, Clarke dropped out of the chess club and her grades went downhill. She was no longer the honors student she had been freshmen year. Her teachers knew of her situation though, of the fact that her dad was dead, so they took pity on her. Instead of failing classes, Clarke’s teachers gave her good enough grades so she was just barely passing.

Abby didn’t even notice the shift in Clarke’s behavior. The surgeon had dedicated more time to her job after her husband’s death, so she was barely home to see her daughter spiraling.

On the one year anniversary of Jake’s death, Abby took a double shift at the hospital while Clarke started out her day with a glass of whiskey and ended it naked in bed with a guy from her chemistry class and a senior girl whose name she didn’t even remember.

That summer went much like the one before it, but now Clarke was faced with the reality that Bellamy was going off to college in September and she was going to lose another friend. Even if the situations were completely different.

On her sixteenth birthday, Octavia threw Clarke a party that the blonde had no memory of, but when she looked at her phone the next morning she saw that she had drunkenly sent Wells a text.

> **Clarke** : I miss him. I miss you.

Wells hadn’t texted back, but when Clarke looked at her call log, she saw that she had been on the phone with her best friend for two hours the night before, but had no memory of the call. She decided then that she would never let herself blackout ever again.

It wasn’t until October of her junior year that Clarke finally came face to face with the fact that she needed to learn how to move on.

It was a rare night that Abby had actually cooked dinner for herself and Clarke. Or rather, she’d ordered it and presented it on nice plates for the two of them to eat at the dining room table.

“Clarke, there is something I would like to discuss with you,” Abby broke the silence at the table.

“Yeah?” Clarke asked, her mouth full of chicken.

“I never expected to lose your dad. I loved him very much and our marriage was a good one, but many times over the years, we discussed what we would do if we lost each other,” Abby launched into a speech cautiously. “We both decided that in the event that something would happen to one of us, we would like the other to wait a year before they started dating again.”

Clarke’s heart sunk as she realized where her mom was going with what she was saying.

“Do you remember the event I attended with Thelonious for the Fourth of July at the state capitol?” Abby asked.

Clarke nodded. She had been invited as well, but knew that Wells was likely to be in attendence. She hadn’t seen him since the funeral and had no intention of ever seeing him again. She still Mr. Jaha on occasion and had no problems with him, just with his son.

“While I was there I met a man named Marcus,” Abby continued. Clarke could tell that her mother was nervous and was treading carefully. “He’s a senator and we’ve seen each other a few times since then, but it’s been harder since he lives in D.C. Things are getting more serious between us now though and I wanted you to meet him to get your approval before we go any further.”

As soon as Abby stopped talking, Clarke knew that her mother was waiting for her to respond. She took a moment though to process everything she had just heard. She wanted her mom to be happy. She had no way of knowing that it was her mom’s fault that her dad was dead and she wanted Abby to be able to move on with her life. She knew it was what her dad would have wanted. Clarke loved her mother and was grateful of the fact that she was asking for her approval over her relationship.

“When do I get to meet him?” Clarke asked with a smile on her face and Abby sighed in relief.

“I was thinking we could take a long weekend and go down to D.C. to look at colleges and meet him then.”

Clarke’s smile faltered slightly at the mention of college visiting. If she had any hope of getting into a decent college, then she would need to get her shit together. Her mom was moving on, she wasn’t acting reckless or depressed. Maybe it was time for Clarke to do the same.

 

* * *

 

Lexa fell head over heels in love with Costia Greene starting the moment she met her. She was from Brooklyn, but bus and subway rides meant nothing to the girls who quickly started spending all their free time out of school together.

Costia drew Lexa out of her shell. Lexa had never been anti-social, but she was always the quieter one in her friend group. Costia exuded life. She had an almost perpetual smile on her face. She greeted bus drivers by their names and made friends with the homeless people who lived in her neighborhood. Sports weren’t something she’d ever been interested in, but she went to every one of Lexa’s lacrosse games after Lexa made varsity their sophomore year. Although, occasionally she would cheer when she wasn’t supposed to.

Gustus and Ryder loved Costia and always asked Lexa to invite her over for dinner. Costia’s parents were supportive of their daughter’s relationship, but were still coming to terms with Costia’s sexuality. They weren’t against it, but were still hesitant at times.

Lexa and Costia lost their virginities together on their six month anniversary after convincing Lexa’s parents to take five-year-old Tris to see a musical that night.

Lexa had never been so happy as she was when she was in love. Love suited her well. It encouraged her to do well in school, to get her work done well so that she could have more time to spend with her girlfriend. Love made Lexa happy so that whatever she did, she did gratefully and with all her enthusiasm.

Love was Lexa’s strength. Anyone that knew her in love knew that.

In the spring of Lexa’s junior year, right in the middle of lacrosse recruiting season, the Network of Kru Schools decided to have a lacrosse tournament. It was to be held at the Skaikru School in Connecticut, one of the few co-ed schools.

Lexa took the bus with her team the hour away to the suburban school. She sang along to the words of Taylor Swift with Niylah, Emori and Echo as they pumped themselves up for the tournament.

Their first game was against the Boston-based Kru School, Azgedakru. The Trikru practically destroyed them. They then had a by, where they watched two more schools play each other. They then beat the Ohio-based Kru school before moving onto the finals where they played the home field team, Skaikru.

Before the game started, the Trikru girls applied eyeblack, hoping to intimidate their opponents. It had a tendency to drip down their faces after they started sweating, but everyone still thought it looked cool.

Lexa played center and found the Skaikru center, a dark-haired girl who went by “Blake” to be a worthy opponent. The game was a hard one.

In the stands, Costia stood to the right of Ryder, Gustus and Tris, cheering Lexa on. To Costia’s left sat a girl with blonde hair, cheering for the center of the Skaikru team.

Always one for making friends, Costia introduced her to the girl.

“I’m Costia,” she smiled at the blonde. “Girlfriend of the Trikru center.”

“Clarke,” the blonde returned. “Best friend of the Skaikru center.”

“I suppose that makes us adversaries then,” Costia teased.

“Oh yeah?” Clarke arched an eyebrow, clearly intrigued by the girl beside her.

“Not really though,” Costia shrugged. “I mean, you guys are supposed to be one network of schools, so these are more like friendly scrimmages anyway. YEAH! GO TRIKRU!” Costia finished her sentence with a cheer, causing Clarke to jump back slightly in surprise.

Clarke chuckled as she glanced back at the field. “You do realize my team just scored, right?”

“Yes?” Costia blushed. “No. To be honest I still don’t really know all the rules yet. My girlfriend is still teaching them to me.”

“It’s probably hard to teach you what’s going on when she’s on the field,” Clarke realized.

“Yeah. Her dads are trying to help as well,” Costia gestured to the two men beside her who weren’t looking at the field, but rather trying to get gum out of their younger daughter’s hair.

“I used to play, so I can help explain what’s going on,” Clarke volunteered.

“That would be awesome Clarke!” Costia grinned.

As the game progressed, Costia listened as Clarke explained everything that was going on. She finally learned when to cheer at the right time for her girlfriend, but also cheered alongside Clarke for the blonde’s best friend.

The game ended with a win for the Trikru School and a surprising friendship between Clarke and Costia. Clarke received a text and was looking down at it as Costia watched Octavia and Lexa shake hands after the game. Though they were both nearly unrecognizable under their masks, covered in sweat and with eye black smearing both their faces, Costia assumed they were giving each other looks of respect. It had been a close game.

“Clarke, I want to introduce you to my girlfriend,” Costia turned to her new friend.

Clarke sighed as she looked up from her phone. “I have to run,” she frowned. “My mom just got called into the hospital and she left the stove on by accident. I have to go turn it off before the house burns down.”

“Oh no!” Costia exclaimed. “Well you should go do that.” She then surprised the blonde by pulling her into a quick, friendly hug. “It was nice to meet you Clarke.”

“You too Costia,” Clarke responded as she returned the hug.

Costia watched as Clarke ran off towards her car, not knowing that their lives had crossed for one reason, because of one person.

After Clarke was out of sight and the coaches had dismissed their players, Costia ran up to Lexa and pulled her into a hug before kissing her in the middle of the field, not caring that she was all sweaty and gross.

That summer was filled with outings to the beach and summer jobs at the ice cream shop by Costia’s beach house. Costia and Lexa were barely apart for more than twelve hours at a time, and they fell even more in love.

They didn’t have their first real argument until junior year, after they’d been dating a year and half. At that point, both girls were crazy busy with school and SAT prep. They went from seeing each other every day, to once a week if they were lucky.

Winter break came with a ski trip to Aspen, and that made things better. They started to realize that come college, they could be spending even less time together.

So instead of getting frustrated at the lack of time they had together, Lexa and Costia started to cherish more the time they were together, and kept all communication on the phone either through calls or texts positive. It wasn’t worth arguing.

Of course they didn’t know at the time how important it was that they were cherishing their time together. Years later, Lexa would tell her wife about how she could still remember the details to even the most random of days she spent with her first love, and how the memories were how she reconciled with losing Costia. Clarke was never jealous of the way Lexa spoke about Costia, because she had met the girl and she knew how special she had been to Lexa.

 

* * *

 

Marcus Kane proposed to Abigail Griffin on Easter Sunday 2009, in the Spring of Clarke Griffin’s junior year of high school.

Clarke had helped Marcus pick out the ring. Marcus would never be her father, no one could ever replace Jake, but Clarke had been quick to like Marcus. Her mother’s boyfriend had insisted that they spend time with not just his girlfriend, but her daughter as well. They had gone skiing with his family in Aspen for Christmas and Marcus and Abby had taken Octavia and Clarke to Florida for spring break.

After Marcus proposed to Abby and they began to discuss the wedding, Abby asked Clarke what she though about having the wedding the following summer, after Clarke graduated high school. Abby would move to D.C. that fall when Clarke would go off to college.

Junior year had been difficult for Clarke. She had struggled to get her grades back up and had found herself falling back into bad behaviors easily, despite her desire to change. She knew she needed to change her life drastically.

She needed to leave the house where memories of her father were around every corner, from the chess table in the living room where he taught her and Wells to play, to the tree house he’d built in the backyard. So instead of getting married in the summer of 2010, Abby Griffin became Abby Kane the week after her daughter turned seventeen in a small ceremony with only family and close friends.

The Jahas had been in attendance, but Wells hadn’t bothered Clarke once.

Packing up the house in Connecticut had been a lot harder than Clarke had expected. She had volunteered to start boxing everything up while her mom and step-dad were on their honeymoon. Clarke had roped Octavia and Bellamy into helping her.

Octavia had originally been angry at Clarke for leaving her alone for their senior years, but had quickly reconciled with her best friend, knowing it was best for the blonde.

Clarke was sorting through her desk when she found the last letter she’d ever received from her pen pal.

 

* * *

 

Lexa hadn’t been on her email address from elementary school in four years, but one weekend during the fall of her senior year, she logged into her account on a whim. It wasn’t exactly a whim, but rather after having a discussion with Costia about what their elementary school experiences had been like.

Lexa had spoken about Anya and fencing and her pen pal from the States.

“I’d felt awkward about having two dads, so I never responded to her email,” Lexa explained to her girlfriend.

“Can I read the email she sent?” Costia asked.

“Oh god, I haven’t been on that email account in forever, I hope I remember my password,” Lexa laughed as she leaned over her girlfriend and grabbed her laptop from the side table and opened her hotmail account.

Too lazy to go through the pages of spam emails, she typed ‘grandmasterartist’ into the search bar, impressed by the fact that she’d remembered her pen pal’s email address.

Lexa was surprised to find not one, but two emails from her pen pal in her inbox. One of which was unread. She quickly glanced at the date the email was sent. July 30th, 2010. She’d received the email less than four months ago.

“So, are you going to open it?” Costia asked, her chin resting on Lexa’s shoulder as she looked over it at the screen.

“Yeah,” Lexa responded. “It’s just so weird that she would email me again after all this time and I’d check the email address only a few months later.”

“Fate is weird like that,” Costia chuckled. “Now open it.”

Lexa promptly complied and clicked on the unread email.

> _Heda,_
> 
> _I have no idea if you even check this email address anymore. Actually, I don’t know if this was ever even the correct email address considering the fact that you never responded to my first email. That being said, I recently found your old letters and I think I figured out why. Silly nine-year-old me didn’t exactly catch on to the fact that you mentioned “Dads” multiple times in your letters, plural. And you never mentioned having a mom. So I’m just going to go out on a limb and guess that I made you feel awkward when I asked if your mom was getting fat (which was rude regardless) if your parents are two dads._
> 
> _You’re probably wondering why I’m sending an email to you, eight years after we last communicated. To an email address I highly doubt you’ve checked since probably before Britney Spears went crazy. Well to answer that question, one I’m not even sure you’re asking because at this point this letter is more a shout into the void anyway, I have no idea._
> 
> _Okay, that’s not entirely true. My dad died almost two and a half years ago, and I had a hard time dealing with it and now I’m moving to D.C. with my mom and new step-dad. I’m moving away from the town I lived in my entire life and while I’ve told everyone that I’m excited and not at all nervous, that’s far from the truth. It wasn’t until after I came across your old letters when packing up my room that I remembered that you moved around a lot growing up and had the hope that maybe you could give me some sage advice. Or maybe I just wanted to tell SOMEONE that I was nervous. Even if you never even read this._
> 
> _Anyway, I hope life is good with you. Wow, that sentence sounded so awkward. But I’m just going to leave it. And now I’m rambling. In an email._
> 
> _Oh! And if I was right about why you never responded, seriously don’t worry about it. I’m gay just like your dads. Or rather, I’m bi, but regardless you have nothing to worry about._
> 
> _Grandmaster (yes I’m signing off with my old nickname)_

Costia helped Lexa craft her response to the email.

> _Grandmaster,_
> 
> _It was by pure happenstance that I checked this email address, actually it was just my girlfriend being nosey about my past (jk I love her). I’m sorry to hear about the passing of your dad. I remember you mentioning how close you were to him in your letters back in elementary school._
> 
> _I guess you’ve probably already started school in D.C., but I figured I’d give you some advice anyway._
> 
> _To be honest, moving isn’t easy. It was easier when I was younger, but back then we were also moving to places where a large part of the community moved around a lot. Moving back to New York was a lot harder. I didn’t exactly do the best job making friends. That being said, I learned from what I did wrong, so I actually can help you._
> 
> _Be open to making new friends. Everyone always knows who the new kid is, but judgements are passed quickly. Talk to everyone in your classes and try and figure out what friend group best matches you. Don’t be afraid to leave a friend group that doesn’t fit you. Don’t forget about your old friends in Connecticut, but make sure you spend time making new friends in D.C._
> 
> _I think it would be weird if you weren’t nervous about moving some place new for your senior year. It’s okay to be nervous._
> 
> _Good luck!_
> 
> _Heda (yes, I’m using mine too)_

Lexa made a habit of checking her old email address. She received another email from Grandmaster over winter break, telling Lexa all about the two friends the girl had made, Monty and Jasper, and how even delayed, Lexa’s advice had been helpful.

They began to exchange emails back and forth and Lexa found herself enjoying the conversations she had with her old pen pal. Neither girl even realized that they’d never exchanged real names.

One of the main focuses of their exchanges was college. Lexa had heard in early fall that she would be playing lacrosse at Columbia, but she was nervous about balancing schoolwork with practices. She was nervous about the possibility of Costia going to a college nowhere near her. Clarke was worried that her sophomore and junior year grades would prevent her from getting into the schools she liked most.

Lexa received an email from her pen pal when the girl got into NYU and another two days later when she got into her father’s alma mater, UCLA and decided that was where she wanted to go.

The last email Lexa received before she moved into her dorm room at Columbia told her that Grandmaster’s best friend from Connecticut had gotten off the waitlist last minute at Columbia and was hoping to walk-on to the lacrosse team there, and that she should look out for her.

Unfortunately, Grandmaster had forgotten to tell Heda the name of her friend, and with ten girls try to walk onto the team, six from Connecticut, Lexa had no way of knowing which one knew her pen pal.

She meant to ask Grandmaster which one was her friend, after one girl, Octavia Blake, made the team, but after October 13th, 2011, she wasn’t able to send another email. She could let herself keep up a connection with someone she knew she would just end up losing.

What she didn’t know was that the connection between herself and “Grandmaster” was one that not even a natural disaster could sever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you enjoyed!
> 
> madgirlbackhome.tumblr.com


	5. Civilizations Could Have Fallen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lexa and Clarke start college on opposite coasts and both their freshmen years begin with losses. But their sophomore years bring surprising friendships in the form of Octavia and Raven respectively. They also both go abroad and well...they go to the same nightclub one night.

On Lexa’s eighteenth birthday, Costia had planned a nice dinner for her girlfriend with all of Lexa’s friends. Before she left for dinner, however, Lexa sat down with her parents and nearly seven-year-old sister.

Tris gave Lexa her present first. Lexa started to laugh at the crudely wrapped gift, but stopped after she saw the look of excitement on her sister’s face.

“Tris picked it out all by herself,” Ryder prompted, giving Lexa a look to explain Tris’ excitement.

“Hmm, I wonder what it is?” Lexa shook the package and Tris was practically jumping up and down in excitement.

Finally, Lexa gave in and ripped off the wrapping paper to reveal a photo frame with the words ‘Sisters’ winding around the frame. Within the frame was a photo of Lexa and Tris from Lexa’s high school graduation, Lexa was holding Tris bridal style and both girls had mouths wide open, laughing.

“I love it Tris!” Lexa exclaimed before pulling her sister into a tight hug.

Gustus and Ryder had one box and two envelopes to give Lexa for her eighteenth birthday. The box contained the leather jacket Lexa had been eyeing for months. The first envelope listed a time for Lexa to get the tattoo she’d been begging her parents for, a stylized arm band.

The third and final present wasn’t one that Lexa had been expecting. And it wasn’t even from either of her fathers. It was from her biological mother.

“She gave it to us before you were even born,” Ryder exclaimed. “She gave us the letter after we’d already met several times and she’d decided we were the parents she wanted you to have. She knew she wasn’t going to have any second thoughts after you were born. She was sixteen and couldn’t raise you the way she knew we could.”

“She told us to give this to you on your eighteenth birthday,” Gustus continued. “You were a closed adoption, but you now legally have the right to find out your birthmother’s information, but that wasn’t why she wanted you to have this. She figured you’d be going out into the world now and wanted to give you advice. Even if she was only sixteen at the time, it’s what she wanted.”

Lexa took the envelope from her dad and flipped it over in her hand. In neat print handwriting was written “Alexandria”. Lexa had never really had any desire to make contact with her birthmother. She knew that she had been a teen mom and that she’d specifically looked only at gay and lesbian couples when searching for a family for Lexa, but Lexa had never felt the need to know her. She already had two parents.

“Thank you,” Lexa grinned. She stowed the letter away. She knew she’d probably want to read it eventually, but she wasn’t ready. Not yet.

 

* * *

 

The week before she was to leave for UCLA, Clarke was searching all over the house for her favorite Yankees sweatshirt, a hand-me-down from her dad, when she found the chip.

It was a bronze, solid coin with the words “To Thine Own Self Be True”. The word recovery was was engraved underneath a roman numeral III. Clarke didn’t need an explanation to know that it was some kind of Alcoholics Anonymous coin.

“Clarke, I found it!” Marcus exclaimed as he walked into the living room where Clarke stood holding the coin she’d found in a drawer.

“Is this yours?” Clarke asked as Marcus approached her. She held up the coin to show him, praying silently that it belonged to her step-father. In the back of her head though, she knew it wasn’t his. Marcus wasn’t a big drinker, but he loved a glass of red wine with dinner every Sunday, as well as when he was at work functions. Clarke also remembered the fact that there was no champagne toast at Abby and Marcus’ wedding.

Marcus paused at the sight of his step-daughter holding the coin. He wasn’t sure how to respond. It wasn’t his position to tell her the truth about Abby, the truth that would eventually lead to Clarke finding out about the truth of Jake’s death. It was a truth that Abby had told Marcus about after they’d been dating two months.

“It’s my mom’s, isn’t it?” Clarke asked, her voice cracked, practically begging Marcus to tell her that she was incorrect.

“Your mom is a wonderful person,” Marcus finally spoke. “She is a great surgeon, an amazing wife, and a fantastic mother. Sometimes, people have problems that they need to learn how to overcome, and your mom has overcome her worst demon.”

Faced with the truth, Clarke flipped over the coin in her hand several times.

“She was going to tell you eventually, when she felt the time was right,” Marcus continued. “I would have liked for her to have been the one who told you, but I don’t want you to jump to any conclusions either. Your mom shouldn’t be defined by her addiction.”

“When did she earn this?” Clarke asked, holding up the coin.

“This past spring,” Marcus responded.

Clarke quickly did the math, subtracting three years. That would have made the start of Abby’s sobriety in the spring of 2008. The same spring her dad died. And suddenly, Clarke understood. She understood why her parents and Wells had all been insistent on the fact that Jake had been driving, when Abby always insisted on driving. She understood why Wells had taken her yelling, her insults and why he’d never gotten mad at the fact that she’d broken their friendship.

He did what any best friend would have done. Protected her. Protected her from the truth. The truth that her mom had killed her dad.

Clarke dropped the coin has the realization hit her like a truck.

“Excuse me,” she muttered, before brushing past her step-dad and running up to her room.

Once in her room, she collapsed on to her bed, covered in clothes to be packed, she didn’t care if she messed them up. She wasn’t going to cry. She wasn’t going to let herself cry.

Her eyes started blurring up, her vision cloudy as she reached for her phone. The iPhone 4 she’d gotten for her birthday. She scrolled through it until she found Wells Jaha’s contact info.

She clicked on his phone number and her childhood best friend picked up after the first ring.

“Clarke?”

“Wells?” her voice cracked as the first tear fell from her eyes. “I need you.”

Wells arrived at the Kane-Griffin home the next day. And Clarke had her best friend back.

Clarke had Wells back in her life for two months.

Wells was going to school in the mid-west, but that didn’t stop Clarke from keeping him up to date on everything that happened in the first two months of her freshman year of college. And he returned the favor.

Wells was the first person Clarke told about the boy with the floppy hair and charming smile in her Art History class. Finn Collins. And Wells listened intently as Clarke fawned all over the boy and eventually started to date him.

On October 13th 2011, Wells Jaha boarded a bus headed to the airport, ready to visit his childhood best friend in California over his fall break.

When a tornado seemingly came out of nowhere, killing half the passengers on the bus, including Costia Washington.

 

* * *

 

Lexa was getting out of her last class of the day, a political science class, when she saw all the missed calls on her phone. Calls from her parents and Lincoln. But she was running late to fall ball practice, and told herself she’d call them back later.

It was the first real practice and she couldn’t afford to be late, now that the roster was complete with walk ons.

Lexa knew that she couldn’t take the fact that Indra was her coach for granted, and that she had known her for years. She wanted to earn a spot on the field just like everyone else, but Indra wasn’t there when she arrived.

Instead, the two senior captain were running campus. When walk-on Octavia Blake asked where Indra was, Lexa could have sworn Octavia was obsessed with their coach, the captains explained that Indra just received the call that her niece died in an accident and couldn’t be there.

And that’s when Lexa remembered the calls from her parents and Lincoln. So, instead of running with the team, she took out her phone and finally read some of the text messages she’d ignored.

> **Dad** : Call us ASAP
> 
> **Lincoln** : It’s about Costia, please call you dads.
> 
> **Papa** : Lex, please pick up your phone.

The weeks following the death of her girlfriend, Lexa lived at home. She still went to her classes, but instead of returning to her dorm room, she spent her nights up town at her parents’ apartment in her childhood bedroom.

After Thanksgiving Break, Lexa decided it was time to move on. Not in the fact that she needed to find someone new to love, no, she needed to move on with her life. She needed to put her priorities back on track. She needed to use her head, and not her heart to make all her decisions.

So she put everything she had into lacrosse and her studies. She made the starting line-up during her first season and got all A’s her first two semesters of school.

During Lexa’s sophomore year, she received a pleasant surprise. Anya had graduated from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland a year early and was going to spend a year in New York before she returned back to a job in Dublin.

Suddenly, Lexa was in a place where she felt okay again. The one year anniversary of Costia’s death passed with Lexa having a movie night with Anya. And as more time passed, Lexa became more hardened. And Anya encouraged it.

Anya was just as career driven as Lexa was. She believed that everyone should put themselves first, that love wasn’t the answer to anything. Lexa fed off of Anya, and started to believe it herself. She started to forget the type of person she was when she was in love.

Lexa’s parents and sister tried to remind her, tried to get back the girl who was happy in love, but Lexa spent less time at home and more time at school.

When she wasn’t at the library, Lexa was putting in extra time on the bounce back and on the field.

It was towards the end of her sophomore year and Lexa stayed behind after practice to run a few extra laps. She was on her third lap when she heard someone approaching her from behind. She slowed slightly so that her teammate could catch up to her.

“So is this why you’re Indra’s favorite?” Octavia asked once she caught up to her. “Because you stay after practice every day, even after she’s basically killed us, just to run some more?”

Lexa scoffed. Lately, she’d been warming up to Octavia. Originally she’d thought the girl to be nothing more than a suck up, someone she couldn’t trust, but she’d grown to realize that Octavia just really wanted to be as good a player as she possibly could. Lexa respected her for that.

“I’m pretty sure you’re her favorite,” Lexa responded. It was true. Indra cared about Lexa not because she was on her team, but because she had loved her niece and because she’d known her as a child. Octavia was like Indra’s prodigy. Indra had formed Octavia into one of the best players on the team.

“Is it true that her niece who died was also your girlfriend who died?” Octavia asked. The fall of their freshman year, very few people knew Lexa well. Even now few people did, but no one had ever outright asked Lexa if the rumors were true.

“Yes,” Lexa responded curtly. She hated talking about Costia. She only spoke about her to Anya anymore. Nobody else.

“I started to play lacrosse after my mom died and my brother and I got put into foster care,” Octavia spoke, keeping an even tone as she ran beside Lexa. “It helped a bit, but I also probably wasn’t going the right way with things. I was kind of a super bitch in middle school when I started playing. I thought if I could concentrate on one thing and be really good at it, that’s all that would matter. I would be more than just some foster kid.”

“Well clearly it worked, you’re playing lacrosse at an Ivy League school,” Lexa retorted, trying to find a way out of the unwanted conversation.

“No, working my ass off in school is what got me into an Ivy League school,” Octavia explained. “I was just able to walk on to the team because I tried hard at try outs. But that wasn’t my point.”

They finished running the last lap and stopped beside the water cooler.

“Then what’s your point Blake?” Lexa spoke, exasperated.

“I turned into a bitch after my mom died, but I still was able to keep who I was at my core because I let myself make friends again. My best friend in high school nearly ruined her life after her dad died, but she realized she was being self destructive. My point was that I think you need a friend, and if you need one, I’m here,” Octavia finally reached her point.

“I have a friend,” Lexa responded, thinking of Anya. Anya who would be moving back to Dublin in a few short weeks.

“I’m sure you do,” Octavia offered Lexa a smile. “But it’s not a crime to want more than one. Besides, running alone is boring.”

Lexa rolled her eyes and watched as her teammate walked away. She thought about how much she would hate running with someone as talkative as Octavia.

Little did she know then, that in a few years, her runs with Octavia would be what saved her sanity at times. And that when she awoke at 5 am the morning of her wedding, it was Octavia who she would call to run with her and calm her nerves about the day to come.

She also had know way of knowing then, that she’d heard about the death of the man who would have been her future father-in-law, and how much pain the love of her life had felt from it. She’d learn more in the years to come, things that Clarke hadn’t ever even told Octavia, but it was a start.

Lexa had heard her wife’s name spoken once before, at a baseball stadium, but it was at the lacrosse field where Lexa stood watching Octavia leave that Clarke would first hear Lexa’s name.

 

* * *

 

After Wells’ death, Clarke fell into Finn’s bed and let herself fall deeply in love with him. She ignored the signs that he was hiding something from her.

She internalized his death. Because his death was her fault. She avoided blaming herself though, instead she placed the blame on her mother. It was her Abby who killed Clarke’s father. It was Abby who put the wedge between Clarke and Wells. And if she hadn’t placed that wedge there, then maybe Wells wouldn’t have been visiting Clarke that weekend. Because if Wells had remained Clarke’s friend throughout high school, then maybe she never would have gone through her troubles in high school. She may have done better in school and ended up at the same college as Wells. And he never would have had to board that bus.

Clarke let herself move on. She let herself blame Abby and let herself enjoy her freshman year of college and her first relationship.

It wasn’t until the first week of her Sophomore year, that Clarke’s bubble was burst.

She was returning to her dorm after the first day of classes when she saw a hispanic girl with a long ponytail looking around, clearly lost.

“Do you need help?” Clarke asked the girl.

“Yeah, I’m looking for Dropship Dorm,” the girl responded. “I just transferred here and wanted to surprise my boyfriend.”

“That’s so sweet!” Clarke cooed. “Well, you’re in the right place. This is Dropship.”

“Oh thank god,” the girl responded with a huff of her breath. “I thought I was going to have to wander around the campus all day.”

“It’s kind of confusing inside, I can help you find your boyfriend’s room if you want,” Clarke offered.

“That would be great,” the girl grinned. “I’m Raven by the way.” She extended her hand and Clarke shook it.

“Clarke,” the blonde responded as she led Raven inside. “What room is he?”

“Uhh, I think he said 100?”

“Cool,” Clarke nodded. “My boyfriend is somewhere around there, so I know the way.” They wandered around the building until they reached room 100. “Well it seems like your boyfriend doesn’t live in 100, because that’s where my boyfriend lives, but we can ask if he knows where yours lives.” She knocked on the door. “What did you say your boyfriend’s name was?”

“Finn Collins,” Raven responded at the same moment the guy in question opened the door. Clarke immediately looked to Raven, then to the boy who opened the door.

“Oh shit,” Finn muttered as soon as he took in the sight of both his girlfriends, together, at his door. He quickly shut the door.

It didn’t take the two girls more than a few seconds to realize that Raven’s high school sweetheart had been cheating on her for nearly a year with Clarke, and that Clarke had been none the wiser.

When Clarke drunk dialed Octavia that night to tell her what had happened, Octavia asked what she was doing about the other bitch. What Octavia didn’t realize at the time, was that Clarke had the phone on speaker and that the reason why she was getting drunk, was because she and Raven had decided to make up a drinking game.

They drank each time they could think of a reason why Finn was a fuck boy.

Needless to say they got drunk very quickly. It wouldn’t be for another few weeks before Clarke called Raven her best friend. But that was the first night of their friendship.

 

* * *

 

In September of 2013, both Lexa Woods and Clarke Griffin spent a weekend in Dublin, Ireland. The two girls were both spending their junior semesters abroad, Clarke in London, Lexa in Barcelona. Both girls had only been in their respective countries a few weeks, but both also had friends in Dublin, and Arthur’s Day seemed like the perfect weekend to visit.

Lexa had warned Anya when she agreed to come stay with her that she was more than willing to go out, but that she didn’t want to ruin her weekend by getting trashed and making regrettable decisions. So after a few pints and some live music at one of Anya’s favorite pubs, The Bleeding Horse, Lexa had no reason to believe that Copper Face Jacks was anything other than a pub.

Clarke, on the other hand, new very well the reputation that surrounded “Coppers,” the late-night club where Octavia claimed she’d only been to on nights she’d blacked out. Clarke and Raven were used to long nights at clubs in Barcelona, so both girls were excited to see what clubs were like in Dublin. Clarke was excited for her two best friends to finally get the opportunity to meet each other.

As soon as Octavia and Raven met, they immediately ganged up on Clarke, trying to one up each other by telling the most embarrassing Clarke stories they could. It wasn’t until Clarke threatened to tell the story of why Octavia no longer drinks gin, and Raven’s story about her tryst with her TA that both girls shut up.

Tequila was flowing freely before the three girls finally made it to the nightclub. Once inside, lights were flashing and music was blaring. Octavia ordered shots for the three of them before they started dancing.

About an hour passed before Clarke yelled to her friends, “I have to pee!”

By that point, Raven was happy to stay in one spot and not have to walk too much, so Clarke gestured for Octavia to stay with her while she went to go pee.

The line was long, but finally Clarke took her turn, only realizing how drunk she was as she sat on the toilet. She finished her business and washed her hands before exiting the bathroom. She was just about to make her way back to her two best friends, when the flashing disco lights swept over to the wall beside the girls’ bathroom. She vaguely remembered Octavia referring to it as the shifting wall, or the make out wall.

She watched as a girl with curly brown hair was pulled towards the wall by a guy twice her size. She tried to pull back, but he kept a strong grip on her arm.

Clarke didn’t know the girl, but part of the girl code was watching out for one another, so she quickly ran over to the shadowy figures.

“Please take your hand off my girlfriend,” Clarke spoke, her voice loud and stern as she looked at the man.

The man immediately let go and held up his hands defensively, speaking in an Irish accent, “Sorry, I didn’t know.” He then quickly walked away.

Clarke turned to face the brunette, but in the shadowy darkness had a hard time making out anything other than the outline of her form.

Lexa watched as lights bounced off a disco ball, dancing across the face of the girl who had just talked off the man who had been holding her arm. In the light, she could only see the girl’s eyes. Lexa wasn’t sure if it was just the lighting, but they were a brilliant shade of blue.

“Beautiful,” Lexa muttered.

“What?” the girl asked. Lexa blushed as she realized she’d spoken her thoughts out loud. She was drunker than she’d originally thought.

Lexa wasn’t sure what made her do it. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was those bright blue eyes, or maybe it was the fact that a random girl had decided to intervene when no one asked her to. Lexa could have handled herself, but this girl made her remember that the world wasn’t made up entirely of chaotic evil. There was also chaotic good in the world.

In the split second before she made her choice, she decided it came down to the fact that she hadn’t kissed anyone since Costia, the fact that she was drunk and lonely and this girl who she could barely see, was good.

So Lexa leaned forward and pressed her lips against the other girl’s.

As soon as the girl’s lips touched Clarke’s, she melted into them. She hadn’t seen the kiss coming, but the unfamiliar lips felt somehow familiar. Her heart thrummed in her chest and she wrapped her arms around the stranger to pull her closer, before she found her fingers working their way into the brown curls she’d seen from far away.

The stranger seemed surprised by Clarke’s reaction, but quickly placed her hands on Clarke’s hips.

Clarke found herself being pushed by the crowd, so she pressed her stranger against the wall behind them until their bodies were flush together.

Hours could have passed. Days. Children could have grown up. Wars begun and ended. Civilizations could have risen and fell and neither girl would have noticed. All that mattered was the unknown body pressed against them.

Finally, they parted their bruising lips and rested their foreheads together, music blaring they could still hear each other’s soft panting breaths. Clarke opened her mouth to say something. Anything. To ask the girl’s name, when suddenly the brunette was pulled away from her by an unknown stranger with dark blonde hair and braids.

Clarke looked around all night for the girl, but as soon as she was pulled away, she was gone. When Octavia and Raven asked her where she’d been, all Clarke could say was, “I have no idea, but I think I just tasted heaven.”

They laughed at her drunken words, but Clarke couldn’t help but remember that drunken words were sober thoughts. And the girl from the club was never far from her memory.

The next morning when Lexa woke up beside Anya, she groaned at her pounding head. She found it ironic, almost like the pounding was the memories from the night before, begging to be remembered, but forgotten.

It was the first time she’d ever blacked out.

When Anya asked her if she remembered making out with some hot blonde, Lexa was forced to shake her head, no. But the more she thought about it, she could remember two things from the night before, the bluest, most genuine eyes, and the feeling that she’d finally found peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! As always, I hope you're enjoying this fic! So, on Friday I am leaving to go skiing in Austria for a week and won't be back until January 16th. Because of this there will be no updates between now and then. None that I'm promising anyway (who knows).
> 
> I hope the ending of this chapter was enough to tide you over!
> 
> madgirlbackhome.tumblr.com


	6. The Way You Taste On My Lips

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The girls finish college and start their post-college lives. Neither realize how close they are, but they finally do something they'd never done before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The hiatus is over and I'm back from vacation! This chapter is slightly shorter than some of the others, and pretty Clarke heavy, but I'm hoping you'll enjoy it!

Clarke never expected a dance floor make out to change her, but it did. For weeks, she thought about that kiss every day. That kiss with a stranger. After coming back from abroad, Raven threatened to move out of their shared apartment if Clarke continued to talk about it.

The summer Clarke turned twenty-one, she got an internship at an art studio. TonDC Gallery was a relatively small, new gallery, but Clarke was happy to work there. In fact, it was through her internship that Clarke met both Niylah and Josephine.

Clarke met Niylah two days before her 21st birthday. She’d been doing a coffee run for the gallery employees when she discovered a new coffee shop at the local market. The blonde barista was talking about a new club that had just opened with the brunette barista while Clarke waited for her order.

“And there’s a ton of outside space as well,” the blonde barista explained to her co-worker. “I grew up in New York City, so I’ve been to my fair share of clubs, but this place is great.”

Clarke still had no idea where she wanted to go for her birthday, and the place she was overhearing being talked about seemed like a great idea.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to pry,” Clarke interrupted, “But what was the name of this club?”

“It’s called The Camp,” the woman responded with a smile. “You should check it out.”

“I think I might,” Clarke nodded. The woman’s smile was genuine and Clarke couldn’t help but notice how pretty the woman was when she smiled. She was probably around her age, and Clarke was definitely attracted to her.

“Well let me know if you end up going,” the blonde barista spoke as she handed Clarke her tray of orders.

Before Clarke could ask for the woman’s number, she looked down at the top napkin on her tray of orders. The words on the napkin read:

> Call Me: 555-5555 - Niylah

And for the first time in a while, Clarke found herself getting excited about a girl. Raven was just happy to hear Clarke getting giddy about someone whose name she actually knew.

Two days later, Clarke texted Niylah, telling her she was going to check out The Camp for her birthday. Niylah responded half an hour later, saying that she hoped to run into Clarke there. The reason Niylah took some time to respond, wasn’t because she was trying to act coy, but rather because she was on the phone with one of her high school best friends to wish her a happy birthday. Her friend, Lexa Woods.

That night, Clarke went home to Niylah’s apartment.

Clarke and Niylah became surprisingly good friends, but both agreed that while the sex was good, that they could never be in a relationship. They worked the friends with benefits angle for about seven months, before stopping. Niylah had met someone else and Clarke was happy for her.

Ironically enough, it was the day after the decided to stop sleeping together, that Clarke came into contact with Josephine. Of course, Clarke wouldn’t realize the irony, the same form of irony that had been following her her entire life, until the day after she and Lexa got engaged.

Clarke’s internship had extended from the summer into her senior year of college. Instead of working five days a week though, she was only working two. Regardless, her schedule somehow wasn’t too packed. She was enjoying her senior spring. She was taking only electives, having finished her studio art major and art history minor, and enjoying time with her friends.

The gallery was mostly empty when Josephine and her daughter came in, on a Saturday in March of 2015. The young mother didn’t know much about art, but her seven-year-old daughter was entranced by all of it. Clarke took the liberty of walking around with the mother-daughter duo to tell them about all their pieces and before they left, Clarke gave Josephine her number.

The first time Clarke babysat for Josephine’s children, Josephine and her husband had to attending a work function. They were both lawyers, having met in law school.

After the younger boy jumped out and scared Clarke when she arrived at Josephine’s house, Clarke jokingly asked the brunette woman, “These two are your only kids, right? Or do I have to worry about another jumping out at me?”

Clarke was surprised to see Josephine’s green eyes flash with some emotion Clarke couldn’t place, but it seemed as if a mask passed over them. Clarke wasn’t sure what to think, but Josephine’s curt response convinced Clarke not to ask any more questions.

“Anna and David are my husband and mine’s only children.”

Clarke continued to babysit Anna and David until she graduated, adding into her babysitting nights several art lessons for the children.

 

* * *

 

Lexa may not have remembered making out with a girl during her weekend in Dublin, occasionally thinking that Anya had made it up, but something shifted in her after that night. She no longer felt as if she was carrying Costia’s ghost around with her wherever she went.

She finished her junior year with a perfect lacrosse season and started the summer of 2014 with an internship at JP Morgan.

Lexa’s 21st birthday fell on a Tuesday, so Lexa had no plans to go out and celebrate. How could she? It wasn’t uncommon for her to be at work until after midnight, and she started promptly at eight each morning.

It was only because she’d texted Lincoln that evening that she went out for her birthday, but it was all Octavia’s fault.

> **Lexa** : Want to get dinner tonight? I already celebrated my birthday with Dads and Tris over the weekend, but I’m actually getting out early tonight.

When Lexa showed up to their favorite diner and saw Octavia dressed up, sitting beside Lincoln, that Lexa realized her mistake when it came to introducing Lincoln to Octavia after the final lacrosse game of their junior year.

The two had immediately hit off and were almost inseparable. They also didn’t shy away from public displays of affection. Something they were engaging in when Lexa arrived at their booth, arms crossed.

“Lexa! Happy Birthday!” Octavia grinned, not moving from Lincoln’s lap where sat.

“You’re looking very dressed up for getting dinner at a diner,” Lexa spoke.

“Well that’s because we’re going out clubbing afterwards,” Octavia grinned.

Lexa hadn’t intended to befriend the spunky brunette, but Octavia had grown on her. Even Lexa had to admit that Octavia’s spirit had started to rub off on her a bit. She’d become more malleable towards going out at night since becoming friends with her teammate.

“I have to work tomorrow,” Lexa frowned as she slid into the booth across from her two friends, already knowing that she was going to bend to Octavia’s will.

“Tomorrow is another day,” Octavia smirked, also knowing that she had Lexa in the palm of her hand. “Besides, it’s your 21st birthday! You have no choice.”

Lexa glared at Octavia, but the smile on her friend’s face finally broke her. “Fine,” she groaned. When Lincoln and Octavia high-fived each other, however, Lexa held up a single finger. “I will not let you get me too drunk though, okay? I don’t need to be hungover at work tomorrow.”

Needless to say, Lexa was incredibly hungover the next day, but refused to call in sick for work. In fact, Lexa went years without calling in sick to work. The first time she did so, was not a day she was sick or hungover.

It was a Wednesday morning and she’d been officially living with Clarke for a few weeks. She’d woken to the sun shining directly into her eyes, reminding her to buy curtains or shades, and had turned over. Feeling the bed move, Clarke had cuddled closer into her girlfriend. Lexa could see that her alarm would go off in less than five minutes, but after looking at Clarke’s sleeping face, she turned off the alarm and sent an email to her boss. She then snuggled Clarke close, deciding that that day was as good a day as any to play hooky.

Despite her one hungover day at the office, JP Morgan offered Lexa a job at the end of Summer to start the following Summer.

Senior year passed much quicker than any of Lexa’s other years in college. She was no longer dealing with the death of her girlfriend, and only had to put in enough effort into her classes to maintain a good GPA, having already gotten a job offer.

After she graduated, twelve-year-old Tris tried to convince Lexa to move back in with their parents, after all her office wasn’t a bad commute from their home, but Lexa knew she needed to live in the city as an adult for the first time.

Deciding to live with Octavia was a spur of the moment decision, one that Lexa regretted immediately, but in hindsight couldn’t have been more grateful for.

For twenty-two years, Lexa had been close to meeting her soulmate on multiple occasions, and moving in with her soulmate’s best friend from high school was nearly the last straw. It was almost what brought them together.

But it wasn’t. What did, was someone else entirely. Well, not entirely, but we aren’t there. Not yet.

Lexa had been living with Octavia for three months before Octavia first mentioned Clarke’s name. She’d referred to Clarke before, but it had always been as “My Best Friend from High School”.

It was a Sunday afternoon in September and Lexa was lying on their couch, watching some show on Netflix about a group of post-apocalyptic teens, when Octavia headed out to leave their apartment.

“Hey Lex, remember how I told you my best friend from high school was moving to the city for grad school?”

“Yes,” Lexa responded. Octavia came around the couch into the living room and sprayed perfume in front of her before walking through it. “She’s the one I wish you’d decided to live with instead of me.”

Octavia rolled her eyes, but the slight smile on Lexa’s face showed that she was kidding. “As do I, but she’s a graduate dorm assistant so she’s living in an NYU dorm. That’s besides the point.”

“So what’s the point then?” Lexa responded. “I’m trying to watch Marie and Ricky reunite here,” she pointed to the screen.

Octavia immediately turned around. “God damnit Lexa, spoilers!”

“Sorry,” Lexa laughed as she fumbled around for the remote before pausing the show. “So what were you saying?”

“I’m showing Clarke around Columbia, she never made it to one of my lacrosse games, so I want to show her around,” Octavia explained. “You want to come with?”

Lexa raised her eyebrows in response to Octavia’s question. She gestured between herself, the couch and the television, as an answer.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Octavia turned to leave the living room. “Well, if you change your mind, we’re probably going to get dinner afterwards.”

“The Chinese takeout guys haven’t quite gotten my order memorized, I need to give them another shot at it,” Lexa snarked.

“Alright, well I’m off,” Octavia grabbed her keys from beside the door and opened it.

“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!” Lexa yelled back as she pressed play on her show.

As she started to watch her show, Lexa spoke out loud without even realizing it. She tested the name on her lips.

“Clarke.”

 

* * *

 

The summer after she graduated college, Clarke moved back to Washington D.C. to live with her mom and step-dad. When Fall came, however, she packed back up and moved to New York City to start a two-year art therapy graduate program at NYU.

She was two weeks into living in New York when she finally met up with Octavia. Both their schedules had been insane, Clarke starting school and Octavia starting her job, so it had taken two weeks for their schedules to line up.

They met up at Octavia’s alma mater and current place of employment, Columbia. As soon as they saw each other, they ran towards one another and ended up falling to the ground in a hug tackle.

When they finally stood up, Octavia turned and gestured to the field behind her. “So this is the lacrosse field,” she explained. “Which is basically the best place on campus and the only part that matters.”

“I wish I could have come to one of your college games,” Clarke frowned.

“Well that’s what happens when you go to college three thousand miles away from your best friend,” Octavia laughed. “That’s okay though, now I get to guilt trip you into coming to all the games now that you live in New York and I’m the assistant coach here.”

“That sounds like a fair compromise,” the blonde agreed. “So tell me, how’s it been, having your first real job? How’s the real world.”

“Hard,” Octavia groaned. “And a little weird considering the fact that most of my team were my teammates four months ago. Other than that though, it’s been great. Even living with Lexa has been going surprisingly well.”

“Lexa?” Clarke asked.

“My roommate?” Octavia spoke in question form. “She was the stuck-up bitch who was on my team in college.”

“She sounds like a real charmer,” Clarke laughed as she linked arms with her friend.

“She’s really not as stuck up as I thought,” Octavia conceded. “She’s actually a good friend. And she introduced me to Lincoln, so that’s a plus. She’s got a few skeletons in her closet, but the best people do.”

Clarke tightened her grip on Octavia, knowing that the brunette was referring to the both of them.

“She sounds interesting,” Clarke responded. “And I’m sure I’ll meet her at some point. But for now, lead the way, show me your school.”

The two friends spent the afternoon touring Columbia before getting dinner at the same diner Octavia had met Lexa at for her birthday. As they parted ways, Octavia mentioned something about receiving a text from Lexa asking for her to pick up wine on her way back, bringing the girl back into the conversation.

Clarke hugged her friend goodbye, as they promised to see each other shortly.

As Clarke walked away, she tested out the unfamiliar name on her lips for the first time. A name she’d repeat thousands of times in the coming years. She’d say it in whispered breaths and heavy breaths. Exasperatingly and annoyingly. She’d say it loud and soft. During meal times and bed times. To her parents and to her sister. She’d say it simply because she loved the way it sounded, and because her wife loved when she would say it.

Clarke would say the word, because it was her favorite word in the world.

But as she tested it out for the first time, Clarke knew none of this. All she knew was that the word was unfamiliar, and yet it sounded right as it spilled from her lips.

“Lexa.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not that I'm giving away spoilers or anything, but you may have noticed that not a tremendous amount happened Clexa-wise in this chapter.
> 
> Everything changes next chapter. See you Wednesday!
> 
> madgirlbackhome.tumblr.com


	7. With a Side of Sprinkles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke meets Tris, Octavia likes to meddle in everyone's love lives (spoiler: she's not good at setting people up)

Clarke Griffin met her future wife’s younger sister in the worst way possible. When Clarke met Tris Woods, the thirteen-year-old was dying.

Clarke was just finished her first week of her second year of graduate school in the fall of 2016 and was heading over to Octavia’s apartment. She’d been to her high school best friend’s apartment a handful of times in the past year, and had joked that Octavia was lying when she said she had a roommate. She’d yet to meet the mysterious ‘Lexa,’ but Octavia had promised that she would be around for their dinner party that night.

And Clarke did meet a Woods girl that night, just not the one she was expecting.

It was a hot day as Clarke walked through Union Square. She was listening to music, not paying too much attention to what was going on around her, until a loud sound startled her. She glanced to her left as she saw a manhole cover being blown high into the sky. It happened without warning and suddenly, landing on a teenaged girl and young woman.

Clarke immediately rushed towards the pair as the dust around them settled, glad that she’d taken an EMT class that year.

As she knelt beside the two, the older woman, probably a few years older than Clarke herself, stood up. The manhole cover had landed on the younger girl and had only knocked the older woman over.

“My name is Clarke, I’m a registered EMT,” Clarke greeted. “Let me help.”

“You have to help her,” the dirt covered woman insisted with a sharpness that brushed Clarke somewhat the wrong way.

“I’ll do everything in my power,” Clarke responded, knowing that promising to save a life was never a good idea. “What is her name?”

“Tris. Her name is Tris.”

“And what’s your name?”

“I’m Anya,” the woman answered. “She’s my best friend’s sister. Help her.”

Clarke nodded and took in the situation in front of her. The young blonde lying underneath the manhole cover was unconscious and surrounded by blood, but in the dust from the exploded pavement it was hard to find the source of the blood.

The EMT worked her way around Tris, trying to get a handle on Tris’ injuries as Anya called 911 beside her. After assessing the situation, Clarke decided it was okay to remove the manhole cover, and with Anya’s help, managed to do so.

With the cover removed, Clarke placed two fingers on Tris’ pulse. “I can’t find a pulse,” she stated.

Clarke tried to keep calm, but on the inside she was freaking out. She was just a passerby and suddenly the young, random girl’s life was in her hands.

“I’m going to give her CPR,” Clarke spoke out loud, hoping she sounded more confident that she felt.

“You don’t need to explain to me what you’re doing, just do it!” Anya insisted. Clarke realized she was right and immediately started chest compressions. She then tilted Tris’ head back and blew down her windpipe. She repeated the lesson she’d learned the first day of EMT class, until finally she tested Tris’ pulse again.

The pulse was weak, but it was there. Moments later, Tris began to cough up smoke.

In order to prevent her from worsening any injuries, Clarke gently placed pressure on Tris’ shoulders, keeping her in place.

“Tris, it’s okay. There was an accident, but you’re going to be okay,” Clarke spoke with a soft voice. “My name is Clarke. I’m an EMT. There’s an ambulance on the way, but can you tell me what hurts?”

“My head,” the smaller blonde whispered.

“Anything else?”

“I can’t feel my legs. Clarke, why can’t I feel my legs?” the young teen whispered, her voice cracking as she tried not to cry.

Clarke quickly made sure that Tris was stable on the ground, that she couldn’t move and make things worse. Her college best friend, Raven, had been partially paralyzed as a child, and Clarke knew what she dealt with on a day-to-day basis. If Clarke could prevent this little girl from doing the same thing, she would.

The ambulance arrived only moments later, with on-duty EMTs whisking Tris away after Clarke explained to them everything that had happened.

Clarke wished she had been able to find out what had happened to the little girl in the following weeks and years. And eventually, she did find out.

Tris would be the one to put it all together. She would be the one who would recognize Clarke as the girl who saved her life. Tris would be the one who would point out the thread that would eventually unravel everyone. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that Tris nearly died that day, it would have taken Clarke and Lexa much longer to realize how much their lives had always been intertwined.

 

* * *

 

After Tris’ brush with death, Lexa moved out of her shared apartment with Octavia and back into her parents’ home. The thought of losing someone else, after already having dealt with the death of her first love, and the near-death of her sister.

It took Tris a while, but with the help of physical therapy, she did regain the use and feeling of her legs. All thanks to the initial care that was given to her by the blonde EMT who just happened to have been walking by at the same moment the manhole cover exploded.

Over the next three years, Lexa dedicated all her time to her job, and her dedication proved worthwhile. Four years after she started her job at JP Morgan, she’d already been promoted twice. Around the office, she was given the nickname “The Commander,” for her inability to take anyone’s shit and her dedication to her career.

It wasn’t until she missed Octavia’s engagement party, accidentally staying too late at the office, that her friend managed to convince her that something had to change.

Lexa was twenty-six years old and hadn’t been in a relationship since Costia. Sure, she’d had a few hook-ups, but nothing serious.

“I’m going to get you laid,” Octavia insisted, gesticulating with her left hand to show off the hefty ring Lincoln had gotten her. “Then once we get you laid, then we’ll find you a nice girl that will get you out of the office more.”

“I like my job Octavia,” Lexa sighed, looking down at her watch. It was only because she’d felt so bad about missing her friends’ engagement party that she had agreed to meet Octavia for coffee during working hours.

“You’re in love with your job,” Octavia corrected, “And we need to get you to fall in love with something that can love you back. A woman.”

“I had sex with a girl last month!”

“And when was the time before that?” Octavia asked.

Lexa narrowed her eyes at the woman who had just been promoted to Head Lacrosse Coach at their alma mater. “It had been a while.”

“Right, so next Saturday you’re not allowed to make any plans,” Octavia spoke as she took out her phone. “I have an idea for someone that you’d get along with. I got a bunch of tickets to the Yankees/Mets game through work and you two are going.”

“So who is this mystery woman?”

 

* * *

 

After Clarke graduated from graduate school, she immediately was offered a job at Mount Sinai hospital. At that point, Octavia suddenly was in need of a roommate, her old roommate having moved home with her parents, so Clarke took the empty room.

For three years, Clarke endured Octavia constantly setting her up on blind date after blind date. It got to the point where Clarke was astonished that Octavia still had any single friends to set Clarke up with. However, like clockwork once a month, Clarke was meeting someone on a blind date, often not knowing if she was meeting with a guy or girl.

A handful of Octavia’s set-ups resulted in second dates, but none had made it to a third.

So in the summer of 2019, three weeks after Clarke turned twenty-six, and one week after Octavia and Lincoln got engaged, Clarke agreed to one last blind date.

“If this one doesn’t work out, I’m done. Got it?” Clarke insisted and she flipped through wedding books with her high school best friend at their kitchen table.

“I have a good feeling about this one,” Octavia nodded. “I can’t believe I’d never thought of her before. You’re going to think she’s great.”

“So it’s a girl,” Clarke sighed. “At least you’re telling me that this time, talk about awkward the last time I had no idea who I was meeting.”

“How about I’ll do you one better and tell you her name.”

“Please do,” Clarke pleaded.

“Her name is…”

 

* * *

 

Lexa arrived at the stadium early. Clarke was just on time. Soon, the game started and the two women stood at their designated meeting places, getting antsy. Lexa contemplated texting Octavia to ask if she’d set her up with a ghost. Clarke did text Octavia, but never got a response.

Frustrated, Clarke decided that she wasn’t going to give up her free ticket to the game, so she headed to her seat. She would enjoy the game, even if her date had stood her up. She was just about to reach her seat, after stopping for a hot dog, when she knocked into a frustrated looking brunette. Then she saw her eyes.

The woman had angry brown eyes that caused Clarke to step back, not wanting to cause any problems. Unfortunately, stepping back from the angry woman, resulting in her backing into another woman.

Lexa had decided that she would stick out the game, hoping that maybe her date would eventually show up. Octavia had forced her to leave her work phone at home, so Lexa figured that she might as well make the most of her time away from work. And when it came to baseball games, that meant getting vanilla ice cream in a Mets cap cup and enjoying the game.

After ordering her ice cream and explaining to the cashier it was for her sister as she asked for sprinkles on top, Lexa went to go searching for her seat.

Lexa had only just turned away from where she’d purchased her ice cream, when she watched a collision happen in front of her. She had just put a spoonful of ice cream in her mouth, otherwise she would have yelled out to the blonde. She would have yelled out to her, to tell her to watch out, but her mouth was full of ice cream and before she knew it, the blonde backed into her.

Not only did the blonde back into her, but she fell on her with such a force that they both fell to the ground, Lexa’s ice cream spilling all over her Mets jersey.

“Holy shit, I’m such a klutz,” the blonde exclaimed as she clamored to stand up. “I’m so sorry!” She reached down to grab Lexa’s hand to help her stand up, and suddenly Lexa was face-to-face with Clarke Griffin.

The first thing Lexa registered were her blue eyes. Something about them seemed oddly familiar. As if she’d seen them before, maybe in a dream. An almost memory. A forgotten memory.

The second thing Lexa registered was the hand the blue-eyed girl extended towards her. Realizing she had hesitated probably a moment too long, Lexa took the woman’s hand and allowed her to help her stand up. She couldn’t help but notice how well her hand fit in the other woman’s. As if they had held one another’s before.

As soon as Lexa was on her feet, she realized that her jersey was covered in ice cream.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” the woman apologized. The blonde grabbed a wad of napkins from behind Lexa and started dabbing at the stain. “I mean, I would probably feel more sorry if you were wearing a Yankees jersey, but…”

“Only a Yankee fan would make a jab like that after acting like a total klutz,” Lexa responded with a slight laugh in her voice and a small smile.

The blonde immediately returned Lexa’s smile and the two joined in laughter.

The blue-eyed girl extended her hand again and Lexa took it. They shook hands.

“I’m Clarke,” the blonde introduced herself.

“Lexa,” the brunette responded.

Neither woman would have thought they’d be so grateful for being stood up on a blind date.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and they've now FINALLY met!
> 
> madgirlbackhome.tumblr.com


	8. The Jersey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clexa watches baseball and cheers for different teams. Octavia has her bachelorette party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry its been so long since i've updated! If you follow me on tumblr, you might have seen the post where I explained that I was on vacation visiting my parents for a few weeks, but then immediately came back to LA to work on a film set. now my schedule is a lot more normal and I'll be back to normal posting!

When Octavia gave her speech as Clarke’s Maiden of Honor at Clarke and Lexa’s wedding, she took credit for setting the two women up. She was, of course, promptly interrupted by Tris, Lexa’s Maid of Honor, who called her out on her lie.

They were always destined to meet and fall in love. It just happened to have been that Octavia had set the two women up on separate blind dates, dates that hadn’t shown up. It wasn’t Octavia that had set them up, if anything it was fate.

Or maybe just clumsiness. The clumsiness that sent Clarke falling directly backwards into Lexa.

After introductions, Clarke kept hold of Lexa’s hand and unceremoniously dragged her towards the bathroom. As soon as they reached a sink, Clarke dropped Lexa’s hand and reached for napkins. She first wiped off all the excess ice cream, then wet a couple napkins and dabbed at the stain.

Within moments, Lexa’s jersey was soaked.

“And chance you’re wearing a tank top or anything under that jersey?” Clarke asked as she looked the other woman’s soaked jersey over.

“No,” Lexa shook her head.

“Okay,” Clarke nodded. She thought about their options before pushing Lexa towards a stall. She stripped off her Yankees jersey, revealing a black tank top and handed it to the brunette.

To Lexa’s credit, her gaze only shifted down to Clarke’s cleavage for a brief second. Which, considering how tight the blonde’s tank top was, was an impressive feat.

“I’m sorry Clarke, but there is no way I can in good conscience wear a Yankees jersey.”

“Your jersey is soaked and have you been outside? It’s not exactly the warmest summer day,” Clarke retorted, pushing the Yankees jersey towards Lexa.

Lexa looked between the jersey and Clarke, trying to move her eyes quickly so that they didn’t drop to Clarke’s cleavage. “Fine.”

She took the jersey and entered the stall.

As Lexa changed, she spoke to Clarke. “How am I supposed to get it back to you?”

“Well,” Clarke began, Lexa waited for her to continue. “Where are you sitting? I can meet you after the game outside your section.”

“Umm,” Lexa pulled the jersey over her head, then withdrew her ticket stub from her pocket as she exited the stall. “I’m in section 112.”

“Me too,” Clarke grinned. “What do you say we head over there now? I’m sure whoever you’re here with is wondering where you went.”

“I uhh…” Lexa trailed off. “Yeah, let’s go.”

The two women left the bathroom and headed towards there section. “I’m in row G,” Clarke spoke, as she pointed toward where she believed the row to be.

“G is this way,” Lexa laughed. Without thinking about it, she took Clarke’s hand in hers and led her towards the row. “I know CitiField pretty well.”

“Where are you sitting?” Clarke asked.

“Right here,” Lexa showed the blonde her ticket stub. Section 112, Row G, Seat 18.

“Well it looks like we’re seat buddies then,” Clarke laughed as she took a seat beside Lexa in seat 19.

“I guess this is the part where I admit that I’m here alone because the blind date my former roommate set me up on stood me up,” Lexa confessed.

“What a coincidence,” Clarke laughed in response, not knowing that it was more than just a coincidence, but fate. “My date stood me up as well. My best friend has a history of setting me up on blind dates that don’t go well, so I’m not sure why I’m so surprised.”

They spent the game cheering for opposite teams, but having more fun than they’d ever had at a game ever before. Clarke even bought Lexa a replacement ice cream in a Mets cap bowl. Lexa smiled when she saw that Clarke had gotten sprinkles on the ice cream without even asking.

“The guy looked at me like I was a child when I asked for sprinkles, but I told him that sprinkles are great no matter how old you are,” Clarke explained after she noticed the smile on Lexa’s face upon handing her the dessert.

At the end of the game, the two women took the train back into the city together.

“Have you told your friend yet that the person she set you up with never showed up?” Lexa asked as the train made its way into Manhattan.

Clarke couldn’t help but grin at Lexa’s choice in words. Clarke had a particularly good gaydar and had figured Lexa to be a lesbian the moment she first introduced herself, so the fact that Lexa hadn’t used any pronouns in her question didn’t surprise her.

“I haven’t told her yet, no,” Clarke answered. “It was a girl though, since I figured you were wondering. It was a girl I was supposed to be going on a date with.”

“Same,” Lexa responded.

“I figured,” Clarke laughed.

When the train finally came in to Penn Station, neither woman was ready to leave the other. So instead of returning to their respective sides of the city, they wandered around together aimlessly. They got dinner at a hot dog stand and people watched from a street corner.

Finally, however, they wandered back to Clarke’s side of town several hours after the sun had set and both women started to yawn intermittently.

“Well, this is my building,” Clarke announced, pointing to the structure behind her.

“Funnily enough, I used to live here too,” Lexa laughed in response.

“What are the odds of that?” Clarke grinned. “Not only did we happen to have seats next to each other, but we could have been neighbors at some point.”

“Quite the coincidence,” the brunette nodded in agreement.

The two women stalled outside the building. Clarke knew that she should go inside, and Lexa knew that she’d probably reached the point where she should turn and head back uptown to her own place.

“It was nice to…” Clarke spoke at the same moment Lexa asked, “Can I tell you something?” The two women giggled at the exchanged. Clarke gestured to the brunette to talk first.

“I’ve never been set up on a blind date before, so when Olivia didn’t show up, I was kind of mad. But I’m actually really happy. Because it meant I got to meet you,” Lexa admitted, a slight blush crawling up her neck. “I know that sounds super cheesy, but I had a really fun time.”

“I almost didn’t go on my set up date because none of the ones my roommate have set me up on in the past have gone too well,” Clarke added her own admission. “I’m glad I did though.”

Neither woman knew how to tell the other that it was the best date they’d been on, if it could even be considered a date. Both women were afraid the other would find the other too forward.

“Your jersey,” Lexa suddenly remember. She made a move to remove the jersey, but Clarke placed a hand on top of hers, preventing her from doing so.

“Keep it,” Clarke smiled. “It’ll give me an excuse to see you again.”

The two women exchanged smiles once again.

“Okay,” Lexa nodded. “Well, goodnight then Clarke.” The brunette took a step forward and placed a kiss on Clarke’s cheek. Clarke grinned, surprised.

“Goodnight Lexa,” she responded before returning home.

 

* * *

 

In the weeks following the game, Clarke and Lexa stayed in contact through text. They’d attempted to meet up again, but Lexa had been crazy at work and Clarke too had been finding it hard to balance work and her duties as Octavia’s Maid of Honor. Despite the fact that they hadn’t been able to see each other in person, they’d gone back and forth talking about their daily lives and sending funny gifs to each other during the work day.

Clarke had been so busy, in fact, that she’d nearly forgotten to invite all of Octavia’s friends to her bachelorette party. Luckily, however, she remembered the Tuesday of the party and sent an email using the list of email addresses Octavia had given her. She’d recognized nearly all of them except for alexandria.woods@jpmorgan.com and a handful of Octavia’s other former teammates.

The night of the bachelorette party, the plan was for everyone to meet at Clarke and Octavia’s before they all went out into the city together in the limo that Clarke had organized to take them around all night.

By 9pm, almost everyone had arrived and Clarke made sure that everyone had a drink in their hand, a special cocktail of her own creation.

Clarke was starting to get to work on one last round of drinks before they headed out, when she heard the doorbell ring. She didn’t bother leaving the kitchen to answer the door, knowing that Octavia and the rest of the girls were in the living as it was and could answer it.

“Lexi!” Clarke heard Octavia exclaim from the other room. “I know you still have a key. You used to live here, you didn’t have to ring the bell!”

Something clicked in Clarke’s head as she realized that the Alexandria on the invite list must have been Octavia’s elusive former roommate.

After finishing pouring a new glass for the late arrival and grabbing the pitcher to refill everyone else’s drinks, Clarke made her way into the living room. When she arrived, Octavia’s former teammates were all greeting the newcomer. It wasn’t until after Octavia shifted, that Clarke actually got to see the face of the woman.

“Lexa?” Clarke gasped, as she immediately recognized the woman.

“Clarke?” Lexa asked in response, equally as surprised.

Clarke gulped as Lexa approached her. When she met Lexa, she was wearing a large baseball jersey and jeans. Clarke had found her attractive that day, but seeing Lexa dressed in a tight black dress, showing off a sexy arm tattoo, and on-point eye make-up nearly made Clarke’s legs turn to jelly.

If Clarke had been paying attention, then she would have seen the way Lexa’s eyes dilated as they raked down Clarke’s own body.

As Lexa approached, Clarke quickly turned and handed Octavia’s sister-in-law, Bellamy’s wife Gena, the pitcher, so that when Lexa did reach her, Clarke pulled her into a tight hug.

“So when you said you’re roommate was setting you up that day, it was Octavia, wasn’t it?” Lexa asked with a smile that nearly melted Clarke’s heart.

Clarke nodded. “And your friend that set you up, was Octavia as well, wasn’t it?”

Lexa imitated Clarke’s nod as the two broke out into laughter.

“Wait, how do you two know each other?” Octavia asked as she approached the two.

“Lexa is the girl I was telling you about,” Clarke admitted with a slight blush. “The one from the game.”

“Oh my god,” Octavia squealed. “Is that why you were being so awkward when I asked you about your date Lexa? I knew something must have happened. If it was horrible, you would have told me. I’m such a genius for setting you guys up.”

It was the first time Octavia claimed she’d set the two of them up, but it wouldn’t be the last by a long shot.

Before Clarke had the chance to correct Octavia, however, her phone started to ring.

“Hello?” she answered.

Lexa watched as Clarke spoke to someone on the phone, but was too entranced by the way Clarke’s blue eyes sparkled as she spoke, that she had no idea what the blonde was actually saying.

“That was the driver,” Clarke explained after hanging up the phone. “He said he’s downstairs and waiting for us whenever we’re ready. I told him we’d be down as soon as we finish our drinks.”

At the mention of drinks, Clarke handed a glass to Lexa. Lexa felt goosebumps rise on her arm as their hands brushed in the exchange.

Octavia watched the exchange with a slight smirk. In all honesty, she never would have thought about setting her current and former roommate up together. Sure, she knew they could bond over losing people they loved, but Octavia never would have placed their personalities together. But in the two minutes she’d seen them interact together, she realized that it was probably a good thing she didn’t set them up. If she had set them up, they probably would have been more wary. They had met by chance though, and that made all the difference.

Clarke was brash where Lexa was reserved, but they both felt a fierce dedication to what they did and their friends. No, Octavia wouldn’t have ever thought to set up Clarke and Lexa. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to pretend like she did.

Two hours later, the entire bachelorette party was suitably drunk. They’d lost track of how many drinks and shots they’d taken and everyone was dancing, belting out the words to pop songs with no regrets.

“I have to pee!” Clarke yelled into Octavia’s ear halfway through the hour of throwback songs.

“Okay, well I just peed, why don’t you take Lexa with you?” Octavia responded, equally loudly over the music. She was drunk, but not too drunk that she didn’t see the opportunity presenting itself to her.

With a few drinks in her, Lexa had finally been convinced to join Octavia’s friends on the dance floor and was belting out the words to Call Me Maybe alongside Raven.

“I have to pee,” Clarke spoke loudly into Lexa’s ear, echoing her previous words to Octavia, pulling her away from Gena. “Come with me?”

Lexa nodded in response, allowing the blonde to grab her hand and pull her towards the back of the club.

Luckily, the line for the bathroom wasn’t long and Lexa figured she might as well pee while she was there.

As the two women stood at the sink, washing their hands, they hummed along to the song playing over the speakers. Clarke playfully hip checked Lexa before leaving the sink and sticking her hands under the hand dryer.

Lexa came up behind Clarke and placed her hands beside hers under the blowing air. They laughed as they realized how ineffective their positions were, but instead of moving so they could both dry their hands, they intertwined their slightly damp hands. Lexa’s left hand in Clarke’s right.

When the song they were humming along to finished, Lexa tightened her grip on Clarke’s hand and led her out of the bathroom. They barely made it past the doorway to the men’s bathroom before Lexa pushed Clarke up against the wall.

She pushed her body against the blonde’s, but before she made another move, she looked into the blue eyes, making sure the other girl was okay with what they both knew was about to happen.  
 She was. Clarke was more than okay with it.

The last thing Lexa registered before she closed her eyes and pressed her lips against Clarke’s, was the woman’s blue eyes, and the way the club lights danced off them. She felt the pull of a memory that didn’t full return until she had one hand wrapped behind Clarke’s neck and her tongue in the other woman’s mouth.

It was a memory she thought she’d forgotten of a drunken night six years earlier, when she was twenty years old and just starting to heal from the death of her girlfriend. It was the memory of eyes that forced her to feel lips. The memory of a kiss that finally allowed for her to heal.

Clarke had never forgotten that night, that night she told her friends she tasted heaven. And kissing Lexa again, was like finding it all over again.

Of course, neither Clarke nor Lexa brought up the shared memory they were experiencing as they kissed again in the hallway outside a club’s bathroom. Neither woman knew it was a memory they shared. As far as they knew, that night at the age of twenty-six, they were having their first kiss.

It wouldn’t be until they had moved in together, into the apartment both women had at some point shared with Octavia, that they would discover that the kiss they’d thought to be their first, wasn’t their first at all. It would be the same day Clarke met Anya for the first time. And Anya would nearly die of laughter as she watched the two of them discover their shared night in Dublin.

Their first kiss not as strangers, however, was one that didn’t end until Raven found them and had to physically pull them apart because Lincoln had shown up after receiving a drunken call from Octavia.

Lexa spent that night in Clarke’s bed. Unfortunately, she wasn’t alone with Clarke. Raven had joined them as well.

They all spent the next day nursing hangovers.

That Monday, however, Lexa woke to blonde hair in her face and an arm that had fallen asleep under Clarke’s naked weight.

And even though she was up plenty early, it was the first morning she wasn’t early to work, in fact, she was late.

Octavia’s wedding was two weeks after her bachelorette party. It was the morning after Lexa asked Clarke to be her girlfriend. The morning after Clarke said yes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two chapters to go!
> 
> madgirlbackhome.tumblr.com


	9. The Letter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke and Lexa say some important words and take a big step in their relationship

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this has taken so long, I hope it's worth the wait! Also, this isn't beta'd so there may be some mistakes

They hadn’t even been dating three months yet when Lexa woke up terrified. Her alarm went off at 5:30 am, just like it did every weekday. She rolled over and checked her phone, unsurprised to find several missed texts from Clarke. Her girlfriend had gone out the night before with Raven and had begged her to join, but she had an important meeting that morning and needed the sleep.

Lexa’s smile quickly disappeared as she began to read the texts from her girl.

> **Clarke** : Last chance if you want to come! Leaving now!  
>  **Clarke** : I’m guessing that means you’re already asleep? Oh well, good luck tomorrow at your meeting! I know you’ll rock it!  
>  **Clarke** : I cant fin Rven. M alone. fone dyin.  
>  **Clarke** : i tnihk im lost

Lexa’s heart was pounding. She was just about ready to call the police when she noticed that she still had another unread text. It was from Raven, whose number she’d only just gotten several weeks prior.

> **Raven** : I have your girl Lex, her phone is dead and she’s crying something about how she doesn’t want you to be nervous. She’s still pretty drunk. I’m taking her back to mine now.

Lexa exhaled in relief as she read the text and sent off a quick response to it.

> **Lexa** : Thank you Raven. Tell her to text me when she gets up and gets her phone charged.

It wasn’t until after her meeting, that did in fact go quite well, and she was sitting at her desk that Lexa came to a realization that terrified her.

She was in love with Clarke.

It wasn’t the realization that she was in love that scared Lexa. If anything, the realization came simply, almost a relief. Of course she was in love with Clarke, it was only natural. What scared Lexa, was how perfect everything seemed to be coming together. It almost seemed like the universe had created the perfect set of circumstances to bring the two of them together, as if their certainty was already written into the history books of Heaven.

It was that certainty terrified her, because what if she fucked up? What if she got her heart broken? Or worse, broke Clarke’s? For several minutes that morning she thought she’d lost Clarke.

Did she believe in fate, or was she destined to lose another love?

As her mind reeled, Lexa’s phone buzzed in her purse. She usually wasn’t one to be on her phone much during the work day, but she was waiting on a text from her girlfriend, so she checked it.

> **Clarke** : I feel like death. Warmed over, regurgitated death.

Despite her terrifying realization, Lexa couldn’t help the smile that made its way onto her face as she read the text. She had a hard time being anything but happy whenever she was communicating with her girlfriend.

> **Lexa** : Hungover?  
>  **Clarke** : Is there a word for a hangover times one million?  
>  **Lexa** : I think that’s still just called a hangover

When there wasn’t an immediate response, Lexa put her phone away and got back to work. It wasn’t until she was on the subway, on her way home, that Clarke responded again.

> **Clarke** : Sorry, I fell back asleep. I’m only just starting to feel like a real person.  
>  **Lexa** : It’s after 7pm, that must have been one hell of a hangover.  
>  **Clarke** : You have no idea. Also, I just went through my texts from last night, I’m sorry for sounding like a total spaz. Raven said she texted you when she found me?

Lexa was unlocking her apartment door when she remembered her realization from earlier.

> **Lexa** : It’s okay. I’m glad everything ended up being okay. I was a bit scared when I read them this morning.

She took off her jacket and hung it up. In the past week it had stopped feeling like fall, and was starting to feel like winter was starting a few weeks early.

> **Clarke** : I was afraid of that. I’m sorry. Do you want to come over and cuddle and watch a movie?

Lexa wanted nothing more than to just relax with her girlfriend after a stressful week of school, but she was scared. She was conflicted. She wanted to tell Clarke she loved her, but she was also scared. Not that Clarke might not feel the same, but because whatever it was that connected her to Clarke felt important. She didn’t want to mess it up by moving to fast. She didn’t know what would be the best for the girl she loved.

“You okay?” Gustus asked as Lexa wandered into the kitchen.

“Yeah, why?” Lexa asked.

“I dunno, you’ve got that look on your face that you’re over thinking something. You’re doing your nervous jaw clenching thing.”

“I don’t…” Lexa began before her father cut her off.

“I’m your dad, I think I know your nervous tics,” he laughed. “So what’s up?”

Lexa wasn’t usually one to talk about her relationships with her parents, especially after what happened to Costia, but in that moment, she could really use some advice. Her dads had been married thirty years and clearly knew their way around a relationship.

Gustus read the hesitancy in his daughter’s stance and gestured for them to take a seat in the living room. Somewhat reluctantly, Lexa followed. As soon as she sat though, she decided to just put her problems out on the table.

“Clarke got drunk and lost last night. It ended up being okay, because Raven found her, but it scared me. It made me realize that I love her,” she spoke quickly.

“I knew you were in love,” Gustus grinned. “So what’s the matter?”

“I don’t know,” Lexa admitted. “I’m scared, but I don’t know why. It’s not that I don’t think she loves me back. I just…what if I’m not good enough for her? Or what if I lose her? What if we’re doing this too fast? I just…I get this feeling in the pit of my stomach whenever I think about her or whenever I’m with her. It’s a good feeling though. It’s almost like there’s a magnet drawing me closer to her, and even if I wanted to, I could never pull away from her.”

“I understand that you’re scared,” Gustus began, “But that thing you’re feeling? That’s a good thing. That means that you’re doing the right thing. It means that loving Clarke is the right thing. Did you feel that with Costia?”

It was the first time Gustus had asked about his daughter’s ex-girlfriend in a long time. The question took Lexa off-guard. Had she felt that? She thought back. She knew that she had loved Costia, loved her more than anything at the time, but had she felt that same pull.

Lexa shook her head. “No. I loved her, but it wasn’t the same. We would have always been happy together, but with Clarke, everything is just…more.”

“That’s how I feel about your other dad,” Gustus shared. “I get a similar feeling for you and your sister as well. It’s different, obviously, but I knew that we were family the first time I saw both your faces.”

“You did?” the woman asked, incredulous.

Gustus nodded. “Do you remember what your birth mom said in her letter?”

Lexa bit her lip nervously.

“She told me some of what she wrote,” Gustus explained.

“I still haven’t read it,” Lexa admitted. “I didn’t see a reason to. She’s not my parent, I have two parents already.”

“You should read it,” Gustus urged her. “I appreciate the sentiment, and it’s definitely up to you, but I think she may have some important advice for you.”

“How? She was sixteen when I was born.”

“You’d be surprised,” Gustus explained, cryptically. “Just think about it.” He then stood up at the sound of the oven timer going off. “I made lasagna.”

Lexa nodded and let her Dad go off to the kitchen. As soon as he was out of the room, she went to her childhood bedroom, the room she’d returned to living in after Tris’ accident. She rummaged around until she found the letter. The name Alexandria was still there in slightly faded ink, written in handwriting that clearly belonged to a teenaged girl. She’d even drawn a heart over the eye.

“You’re being totally unreasonable!” Lexa heard her sister yelling as she slammed the front door across the apartment. “I’m sixteen years old, I can make my own decisions!”

Lexa chuckled to herself, wondering if she’d been as naive at her sister’s age. She must have been.

“It’s all the way across town Tris,” came Ryder’s voice.

“What’s going on?” Gustus asked, clearly just joining the conversation.

“She wants to go over to Madison’s,” Ryder explained. “But I told her that we couldn’t take her and it’s too late to let her go by herself. Especially if there’s going to be alcohol involved.”

Lexa had dropped Tris off at her friend Madison’s multiple times over the years. An idea came to her as she left her room to join her arguing family in the living room.

“Madison said that Carly said that Dave was going to be there because he heard I was going. Don’t you know what that MEANS?” Tris pouted. Lexa had to hold back a chuckle as she entered the room. Certainly she wasn’t as bad as Tris when she was a teenager.

“I can take her,” she offered. “I’m going over to Clarke’s so I can stop by Madison’s on the way.”

“Lexa can take me!” Tris exclaimed with a grin.

Their dads exchanged a look. Tris and Lexa rolled their eyes at one-another. They’d never understood how it was that their dads could seemingly have an entire conversation just by looking at each other.

“Okay, fine,” Ryder finally relented. “But you are to stay at Madison’s, no leaving. And you have to stay the night because I don’t want you drinking, then trying to get home. Got it?”

Tris squealed, hugged both her fathers, then ran off to her room. “Let me get ready then we can go!”

Lexa turned the letter over in her hand before folding it into her back pocket. She withdrew her phone and sent off a text.

> **Lexa** : Always. I’ll be over in an hour.
> 
>  

* * *

 

Clarke was just about to order pizza when she got Lexa’s text. She responded to the text with a thumbs up emoji, and ordered the half pepperoni, half pineapple pizza before settling onto the couch in her sweats. She was thankful that she and Lexa had finally gotten to the point where they didn’t feel the need to dress up, or even put make up on when they were around one another.

Clarke knew that something was up with her girlfriend as soon as she opened the door to let her in.

“What’s wrong?” she asked immediately.

“How is it that everyone always knows when somethings up?” Lexa huffed. She passed Clarke and plopped down onto the girl’s couch, limbs fully extended. “Am I really that obvious?”

Confused, but ready to be there for her girlfriend, Clarke sat cross-legged on the floor beside Lexa. “You’re actually pretty good at hiding your feelings,” she admitted. “But I’ve got you figured out. You do this thing where you clench your…”

“Jaw, I know,” Lexa interrupted. “That’s exactly what my dad said.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Clarke asked. She hoped that Lexa would talk to her about whatever it was that was wrong, but she also didn’t want to pressure her into anything.

Lexa flung one arm over her face, but extended her other arm down to the blonde. Clarke grasped it, hoping this was the first step to Lexa opening up more. Lexa had told her a few weeks earlier about Costia, and how she died, and that had been a big step in their relationship. Something about the accident had felt familiar to Clarke, but being so focused on her girlfriend and the pain she’d clearly experienced, she hadn’t tried to figure out why it felt familiar.

After several moments of silence, Lexa removed her arm from over her face. She turned onto her side and reached down with her free arm. Clarke took it, but Lexa shook her head. Confused and slightly hurt, Clarke let go, but then Lexa gestured for her to join her. The brunette pulled the blonde up onto the couch with her. It was a tight squeeze as they faced each other, but Clarke utilized their position to search Lexa’s eyes for some sort of explanation.

“Whatever it is, you can tell me,” Clarke insisted. Her heart sped up as she reached a hand up and placed it on the side of Lexa’s face. The brunette leaned into her touch. “I love you.” Admitting that truth to Lexa was easy. She hadn’t thought about when she was going to tell her, in fact she hadn’t thought much about it at all. The words rolled off her tongue with ease, without any forethought, but that didn’t make them any less true.

Lexa’s green eyes quickly focused on Clarke’s, full of surprise. It wasn’t until Clarke recognized the look of surprise that she began to wonder if saying those words had been the right move.

“I’m not taking that back,” the blonde insisted. “I just…I love you, and you can tell me anything.”

“I love you too,” Lexa responded with a slight grin. Clarke could feel the tension leaving Lexa’s shoulders. “That’s what I wanted to tell you.”

“That’s what was wrong?” Clarke asked. “Did you not think I’d say it back?” She felt conflicted, wondering if Lexa really thought she wouldn’t say the words back.

“No!” Lexa exclaimed. She quickly sat up, nearly knocking Clarke off the couch in the process. She grabbed onto the blonde before she could fall and sat them up on the couch so that they were still facing each other. “That wasn’t it at all. I don’t really know why I was so scared. It’s dumb really.”

“It’s not dumb if it’s something you feel,” Clarke insisted, intertwining their fingers.

“Well there’s something else as well,” Lexa reached into her back pocket and withdrew the envelope containing her birth-mother’s letter. “My parents gave this to me on my eighteenth birthday, it’s from my birth mom. I haven’t read it yet. I told my Dad it was because I didn’t need her, and I don’t, but he wanted me to read it anyway. I’m also…I guess I’m also nervous it’ll say something I don’t want to hear.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Anything, really. Maybe I’ll find out I have a family history of early onset Alzheimer’s, or maybe she’ll say I was the product of rape.”

“I don’t think she’d say either of those things,” Clarke spoke. “She clearly cared enough about you to write you a letter. She also gave you up to parents she knew would love you.”

“What if I read it and want to know her?” Lexa asked, her voice barely over a whisper. Clarke immediately knew that Lexa’s last fear was her one true fear. She knew Lexa well enough to know that the brunette loved fiercely and she loved her family more than anything. She was probably scared that wanting to know her birth mom would hurt her parents.

“Then that’s a decision you’ll have to make,” Clarke responded. “But you won’t know until after you read that.” She gestured to the letter.

“You’re right. I know you’re right. I just…I just didn’t want to be alone when I read it.”

“I’m here.”

As Lexa’s hands shook, shaking the letter, Clarke placed a reassuring hand on her girlfriend’s forearm. Lexa looked up at her and Clarke gave her a reassuring smile.

Carefully, Lexa opened the envelope and withdrew a letter folded on yellow stationary. Clarke watched green eyes scan the page before long fingers thrust the page towards her.

“Can you read it to me?” Lexa asked. Clarke didn’t need Lexa to explain why. She simply nodded and took the letter.

Clarke took a deep breath before she began to read out loud.

> _Alexandria,_
> 
> _The fact that you’re reading this means that you are eighteen years old. You are older than I am now, writing this to you. I’ll start by admitting that while I’ve made many mistakes in my life so far, getting pregnant and choosing to give you up for adoption is not one of those mistakes. Maybe a day will come when I will regret giving you up, but I don’t think so. Your Dads already love you so much and they only just held you for the first time an hour ago._
> 
> _They’re with you now, in fact. I just said goodbye to you. Gustus and Ryder promised to say goodbye to me before they leave the hospital with you. I’m going to give them this letter then. They’re going to be the perfect parents for you, I know it._
> 
> _I’ll always love you Alexandria. I’ll always think of you. I will celebrate your birthdays, despite the fact that I won’t be with you. Know that you will never be gone from my heart._
> 
> _You’re going to be great Alexandria. You’ll go on to do great things. Never forget that there are people who love you. I may love you from afar, but in your life you will also have those that love you. You’ll have your parents and there will be others that you’ll gain throughout your life. Never forget that._
> 
> _Love freely. Let yourself give your heart away, even if you don’t ask for anything in return. Don’t let loss change the way you love. And if you do, let it strengthen your heart. Let it force you to care more, not less._
> 
> _You’re eighteen now, and you’ve still got your entire life in front of you. Live that life by following your heart. And when you find the person whose soul seems to match yours perfectly, let them know. I don’t know when you’ll meet them, and it may be a long journey, but when you find them, keep them close. Never let go._
> 
> _Make sure she knows you love her._
> 
> _I don’t expect you to ever try and contact with me. In fact, I know I will have made the right choice if I never hear from you, because that’ll mean that Gustus and Ryder were the only parents you ever needed._
> 
> _Maybe one day though, we’ll see each other. We might be on opposite sides of the train tracks. Maybe we’ll catch each other’s eyes for a moment. We’ll smile at each other the way strangers do sometimes. Then the train will come and we’ll go our separate ways._
> 
> _We may never know each other, but that’s okay, because I will always love you._
> 
> _Love,_
> 
> _Josephine_

The first words out of Lexa’s mouth after Clarke finished, were not the words she was expecting to hear. “So I guess it was obvious I was gay from the day I was born,” the brunette laughed.

“What do you mean?” Clarke asked.

“She said, ‘make sure she knows you love her’. She used she as a pronoun, unless you added that in of course.”

Clarke quickly scanned the letter and laughed. “You’re right, she did.”

“I think I’d like her,” Lexa admitted. “She seems smart for a sixteen-year-old. Even if she did get knocked up at a young age.”

“She does,” Clarke nodded. “She also seemed to know how you’d turn out.”

“I wonder if it was because I’m like her,” Lexa questioned out loud. Clarke had been wondering the same thing. In the back of her mind, she wondered why the name Josephine sounded familiar, but brushed it off. After all, why would she be thinking about the woman whose children she used to babysit while talking about her girlfriend’s birth mother?

“So does that mean you want to meet her?”

Lexa shrugged in response. “I’m not really sure,” she admitted. “I wasn’t expecting to not be sure. I thought I’d either want to, or not want to. I think it might be nice to meet her, but more just to show her that I’m doing well. I think she’d like that. I also don’t feel like I have to meet her, if that makes sense.”

“That makes a lot of sense Lex,” Clarke leaned forward and kissed her girlfriend’s forehead.

“Also maybe someday,” Lexa grasped Clarke’s hands and brought them to her lips. She kissed them, then settled them on her lap. “Maybe someday I could introduce you to her, let her know that I did it. I found the person I was supposed to love. And I kept her.”

It wouldn’t be until their oldest, Aden, was a year old that Lexa would meet her birth mother. It was a total accident actually. She and Clarke and spoken more about trying to find Josephine, and Clarke had even wondered out loud as a joke if it was the same Josephine she’d babysit for.

What was most ironic about their meeting, however, was the fact that they met at a train station, just as Josephine had mentioned in her letter. Josephine was New York City with her son and stopped the Griffin-Woods family to ask for directions in Grand Central Station. She and Clarke immediately recognized each other and got to talking.

Lexa’s biological half-brother was the one who noticed the similarities in appearance and demeanor between his mom and Lexa. The connection was quickly made.

Instead of parting ways as strangers, however, they parted with a promise to get lunch the next day, just Josephine and Lexa.

Sitting in Clarke’s living room that night, they knew nothing of the meeting that would come years in their future, but they did know that that night would be one they’d remember forever. How could they not?

It was four years before Aden was born. One year before Lexa asked Clarke to marry her. Three months before they moved in together. And most importantly, it was the night they first told each other, that they loved the other.

It was also the night before Clarke met Tris for the second time. And when Clarke met Tris, this time knowing she was Lexa’s sister, that was when they began to make all the connections. The connections that would lead to Clarke calling Lexa something no one else ever had, nor ever will.

And that’s when they would start to think that maybe soulmates did exist after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one more chapter to go! The next one is a fairly sizable one, but I'm hoping to have it up within the next week or so. There's lot's of fluff in it ;) because HAPPY ENDING in here
> 
> -kris  
> commanderlexark.tumblr.com


	10. The Prophecy Fulfilled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke and Lexa take a big step in their relationship and finally, the prophecy is fulfilled

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOAH here it is, the final chapter! I apologize for the fact that it took so long, but I wanted to make sure I included everything I thought necessary and tied up all the loose ends. I absolutely LOVED writing this fic and I hope you've all enjoyed reading it, so without further ado...

Clarke and Lexa did not mean to run into Lexa’s younger sister the morning after they admitted their love for one another. It was a total accident. But then again, their lives had been a series of accidents and random happenstances. That morning was no different.

They went out for brunch, trying out a place they’d never been before. They had just finished a round of mimosas when a familiar face walked in beside a less than familiar face.

“Tris?” Lexa spoke out loud.

“What?” Clarke asked, turning around to follow Lexa’s gaze.

Sure enough, Tris Woods had just walked in alongside a boy about her age, a boy Lexa figured must have been Dave.

“Do you think I should go up to them?” Lexa asked.

Clarke shook her head in response. “Don’t. It’s probably their first date. Don’t make it awkward.”

“Good call.”

Clarke and Lexa had just about finished eating their eggs when Lexa’s sister walked by, clearly on route to the bathroom. She skidded to a stop when she recognized her sister and the girl she’d only heard about, but hadn’t yet actually met.

“Lexa? What are you doing here?” Tris asked.

“Brunch, I see you had the same idea,” the older Woods sister laughed. “You here with anyone special?”

Not wanting to answer, Tris quickly shifted the topic of conversation. “So you must be…” Tris turned towards Clarke and immediately scrunched her face in confusion.

“Clarke,” the blonde supplied her name, confused. She knew that Lexa had talked about her with Tris before.

“I just assumed Clarke was a relatively common name,” Tris supplied. “I didn’t think you would be Clarke the EMT.”

“Clarke the…” this time it was Clarke’s turn to trail off, she then grinned and Tris matched her smile.

“Your girlfriend is the passerby EMT that saved my life when the manhole cover exploded,” Tris explained to her sister. “Small world, huh?”

They had no idea how small it really was. Tris had just revealed for the first time to Clarke and Lexa the true interconnectedness of their lives, but it wasn’t the last time they would discover more about their joint lives.

 

* * *

 

They had been married nearly six months before Octavia and Lincoln officially moved out of Octavia and Clarke’s shared apartment, leaving Clarke without a roommate. Her apartment was in a great location and under rent control, basically a unicorn in New York City. The last thing Clarke wanted to do was give up her apartment, but she couldn’t afford to live their alone.

None of her friends were interested in moving and Clarke had no interest in finding a random roommate.

Neither Clarke nor Lexa wanted to pull the lesbian stereotype of U-Hauling and moving in together quickly, but it was the most logical solution. Tris was already starting to think about college and Lexa’s parents had not-so-subtly hinted to her that they would like the apartment to themselves after Tris finished her last two years of high school.

Neither Clarke nor Lexa remembered whose idea it was for them to move in together, perhaps because it was a mutual decision. They, of course, voiced concerns about moving too fast, but they were just words spoken. Neither woman actually believed that they were moving too fast. They knew where their relationship was heading. It was inevitable. They were inevitable. They always had been.

Moving day came much quicker than either woman expected. Lincoln and Octavia were moved out on a Friday, and Lexa moved in that next day. She moved back in really, as the apartment had once been hers as well.

Lexa didn’t have too much furniture, coming from her parents’, but enough to fill up Lincoln and Octavia’s old bedroom, now the guest room, and a few pieces of furnishings for the living room.

What took the longest was for Lexa to go through the cardboard boxes that she’d packed up when she’d moved out the first time and not gone through since. Clarke too wasn’t the most organized of people and needed to clear clutter from her room to make room for Lexa’s stuff.

Despite the fact that it was the dead of winter, the two women were overheated and sweaty from moving furniture and going through boxes. Tensions were high. They were both tired, hungry and hot. Neither woman was in a great mood.

“You literally have Reeses Easter Egg wrappers in crevices I’m struggling to even reach,” Lexa huffed, showing off the litter to her girlfriend, a look a pure annoyance in clear display on her face. “It’s February! These are nearly a year old! When was the last time you gave this room a deep clean?”

“Never,” Clarke shrugged. “It’s simple, just throw the wrappers out. No big deal.” Clarke grabbed the wrappers from Lexa’s hand and tossed them into the large black trash back that was quickly becoming full.

“We’re going to have to clean much more often. I can’t live in a pig sty.”

“Well I’m not a big fan of clutter either,” Clarke grabbed one of Lexa’s boxes and tossed it on the bed, several pieces of paper falling out of it. The blonde placed her hands on her hips like a petulant child.

Lexa simply laughed out loud with a scoff. “If you think that’s clutter, then you need to take a look at your own shit.”

Their argument was interrupted by the sound of a phone ringing. Clarke checked hers first and found that it wasn’t ringing. Lexa’s rummaged through a pile of clothes before finding her own phone. Anya was calling.

She didn’t offer Clarke an explanation, she simple answered the phone with a terse, “Hello?” as she walked out into the living room.

“Way to tell me you have a serious enough girlfriend that you’ve moved in with her,” came Anya’s lilt over the phone.

“Huh?” Lexa responded, feeling as if she’d been dropped into a conversation halfway through.

“I just stopped by your parents to surprise you with a visit, only to find out you don’t live there anymore!”

Lexa cringed as she realized that she’d never actually told Anya how far her relationship with Clarke had progressed. They weren’t that great at keeping up with one another. She knew that she’d told Anya all about Clarke, but couldn’t remember what her oldest friend knew of her.

Then she processed the fact that her friend was in New York City, and not Dublin.

“Wait, you’re here in New York?” she exclaimed.

“Yes you twat,” Lexa could practically see Anya rolling her eyes. “Now come let me in, I’m outside your building. Your Dads gave me your address and I want to meet this girl that you’re sickeningly in love with.”

Before Lexa could get in another word, the call was ended.

Anya was waiting for Lexa downstairs, and Lexa was still halfway through an argument with her girlfriend.

“So the infamous Anya is here?” Clarke questioned in statement form. Lexa looked up, surprised to find her girlfriend leaning against the door jamb to their bedroom. “You keep the volume on your phone up way high. You’re going to go deaf one day.”

Lexa sighed, she didn’t want to fight with Clarke anymore, especially not now that Anya was there.

“You’re right, I’m a bit of a mess,” Clarke continued. She left her position at the door and approached Lexa. “I was being petty and I don’t want to fight.”

“Me neither,” Lexa agreed. “And maybe I can be a bit sentimental for keeping so much clutter.”

“Like you said, I have clutter too. I mean, I’m pretty sure I still have pen pal letters from elementary school in the room.”

When Clarke reached Lexa, they wrapped their arms around one another.

Lexa pecked Clarke’s lips before she spoke, “I should let you know that Anya is the most impatient person I’ve ever met, so while I’d love to stay here in your arms, I need to go downstairs to let her in.”

“Go,” Clarke pulled away and patted her girlfriend’s arm. “I’ll be here waiting.”

It didn’t take long for Lexa to return, Anya’s suitcase in one hand with Anya herself trailing behind her.

“She’s not staying with us, we’re simply a stop on her journey,” Lexa announced as she walked through the door, dropping the suitcase with a thud beside it. “Isn’t that right Anya?”

“If that’s your subtle way of telling me I’m not welcome your first night after u-hauling, then that is correct,” Anya responded as she shed her gloves. “You must be Clarke,” she offered the blonde a thin smile. “I’d say Lexa has told me all about you, but if I’m being honest I just drown her out whenever she mentions you on the phone. It all starts to sound the same, Clarke this, Clarke that, did I tell you how amazing Clarke is? Anyway, I’m sure you’re great.”

“Nice to meet you Anya,” Clarke chuckled. “Lexa has had only great things to say about you as well.”

Anya raised an eyebrow at her younger friend. “So she lied then, did she?”

Lexa smiled awkwardly, eliciting a light laugh from Clarke and a smirk from Anya.

It wasn’t long before the three women were comfortably settled in the living room, talking over wine and cheese that Lexa had run out to get after insisting it was the classy thing to do.

“As much as I love Ireland, Dublin specifically, I love getting to travel stateside and spending time in New York City,” Anya admitted after Clarke went through a list of her favorite parts of the city.

“I’ve only been to Dublin once, but I could see why you love it there,” Clarke agreed.

“When were you in Dublin?” Lexa asked, not having heard about it yet from her girlfriend.

“It was one of the places I visited while I was studying abroad junior year of college. I was actually there for Arthur’s Day. It was a blast,” the blonde grinned. “We went to this club called Coppers, I’m not sure if you’ve heard of it, but I may or may not have made a bit of a fool of myself there.”

Clarke didn’t miss the blush spreading across her girlfriend’s cheeks at the mention of the club.  
 “What?” she asked.

“Well your girlfriend here,” Anya pointed to Lexa, “Came to visit me during her time abroad as well. She too discovered Coppers on Arthur’s Day. I had to pry her off some blonde to get her to leave, and she didn't even remember it the next mor—” Anya abruptly stopped mid-sentence as Clarke’s face paled.  
Confused, Lexa’s eyes darted between her friend and her girlfriend. Clarke and Anya had simultaneously realized something that Lexa hadn’t yet caught onto.

“There was a guy who wouldn’t take no for an answer,” Clarke started to explain, still fully remembering the night herself. “Then this girl came up and said she was my girlfriend to get him to leave, and he did. She called me beautiful, I remember that.”

Clarke instinctively shifted closer on the couch to her girlfriend and mindlessly curled a strand of curly brown hair in her fingers.

“I remember the way her hair felt in my fingers, and the way her…” She leaned forward and the same moment Lexa finally registered what Clarke was talking about.

Lexa remembered the flash of bright blue eyes and not much more, but she also remembered the familiarity that came when she pressed their together.

And years later when they kissed again, this time Anya face-palming behind them, they weren’t strangers at all.

“I wish I hadn’t been so drunk that night,” Lexa admitted as she pulled away. “Then maybe I would’ve remembered earlier. Or maybe…”

Clarke pressed a finger to Lexa’s lips and shook her head. “No what ifs, just nows.”

Lexa grinned and kissed her girlfriend’s finger.

“I hate to interrupt this lovefest, but I’m starving. Let’s go out to dinner,” Anya interrupted. Lexa and Clarke laughed and agreed. And after getting dressed in warm clothes, they left for dinner, bringing Anya’s suitcase with them.

 

* * *

 

“We never ended up finishing organizing the room,” Clarke mused aloud after she entered her and Lexa’s bedroom. She took the box she’d earlier thrown on the bed in a huff and placed it on the ground.  
 “What was that?” Lexa yelled from the front door, where she was still struggling to untie her snow boots. Clarke had naturally pulled her own boots off without untying them.

Clarke began to gather the pieces of paper that had fallen out of the box and were scattered over the blue duvet.

“I said…” Clarke began before trailing off. Her hand shook slightly as she picked up an envelope with familiar handwriting on it. Familiar not because it was Lexa’s handwriting, but rather because it was a childish version of her own handwriting.

“What’s going on?” Lexa asked, popping her head into the bedroom. “Oh shit, we didn’t finish putting everything away. I’m too tired to do that now, can we just clear the bed and worry about the rest tomorrow?”

Lexa pulled her sweater over her head and began to rummage through a drawer. She pulled a t-shirt over her head before she realized that Clarke still hadn’t responded, and that she had a look of shock on her face.

“Babe, is something wrong?” Lexa came up from behind her girlfriend and wrapped her arms around her. She kissed the side of her neck before looking down at the letter Clarke had opened in the time it had taken her to find a sleep shirt. “I didn’t even realize I still had that,” Lexa laughed. “I had a pen pal back when I lived in Hong Kong. We actually got back into contact when I was a senior in high school, but we stopped talking…”

“Freshman fall of college,” Clarke finished Lexa’s sentence.

“Have I really told you all my stories?” Lexa laughed, not catching Clarke’s more somber tone.

Clarke quickly pulled out of Lexa’s grasp and made her way towards her desk. She rummaged through it, throwing papers and candy wrappers behind her as she searched.

“Clarke?” Lexa asked. “What are you looking for?”

Clarke finally found what she was looking for, and with shaking hands, unfolded the piece of looseleaf. It was more wrinkled than the letter Lexa had kept, but the handwriting on the paper was much neater. She handed it to her girlfriend.

Confused, Lexa took the paper. It took her reading only two words for her to understand why Clarke had handed her the letter. The top of the letter read, “Dear Grandmaster…”

And then she understood.

By this point in their relationship, they’d already established the connection they had through Octavia, but hadn’t given that much extra thought. After all, that was part of how they had met. Knowing that Clarke had been the one to save Tris’ life was merely a coincidence to them. Or at least, that is what they’d thought at first. Knowing they were at the same club while abroad was also a coincidence.

It was finding those letters, written two decades earlier, that changed everything for Clarke and Lexa. It changed the way they saw not only each other, but the world around them.

“You’re Grandmaster?” Lexa asked, incredulously.

“And you’re Heda,” Clarke returned.

And with those words finally spoken out loud, the prophecy was fulfilled.

Long fingers wound through tousled blonde curls and eyelids fluttered closed over both green and blue eyes as lips found each other other.

They didn’t speak as they poured emotions into each kiss, each touch.

Their connection was visceral. It was real. And it preened as the two women found bliss in one another’s touch countless times that night.

Over the years, they would discover the multitude of connections that had been made throughout their lives.

Lexa’s parents would meet Clarke for the first time at Clarke and Lexa’s housewarming party. Ryder would ask Gustus why the last name Griffin sounded so familiar and Gustus would ask Clarke if she was related to Jake Griffin.

“He was my father,” she would answer. And they would catch on to the past tense aspect to the sentence immediately.

With a grin, Gustus would tell his daughter and his girlfriend of the night he met Jake, the night of their births, and the women would squeeze each other’s hands. Ryder would then tell about how Gustus and Jake had discussed high schools together, leading to Clarke attending the school she did.

It would be Lexa, however, who would remember meeting Jake at a baseball game. And when Clarke would cry into Lexa’s shoulder later that night, it would be because she was glad that even though he was no longer alive, her father had, in fact, met the love of her life.

On the anniversary of both Costia and Wells’ death later that year, they would share their connection of loss, for once not surprised to find out their lives were even more entangled than originally believed.

Meeting Josephine would be the last connection they would learn they had before they first met. And when she would tell Lexa of the words spoken to her in prophecy form, Lexa wouldn’t even be surprised.

They would never learn of the first time they held hands, accidentally, in a haunted house. They held that through muscle memory, believing that their years together was why their hands always seemed to fit inside one another’s.

While they would spend countless moments over the years marveling over their connections, they would live a real life together, full of obstacles as well.

They would argue over parenting methods when their daughter Ontari reached her rebellious teenage years and would sneak out her window, running off to meet her troublesome boyfriend, disagreeing about the proper way to discipline her.

They would argue over treatment options when their son Aden was diagnosed with leukemia.

They would argue over financials when they decided to move to the suburbs.

Above all, though, Clarke and Lexa would be a team though. When Ontari would tell them she was pregnant at seventeen, they would support her when she made the most difficult decision of her life. They would hold each other tight when Aden was officially declared disease-free. They would agree to the picket-fenced house in the suburbs with the large yard after Clarke would publish a best selling book.

That was all to come, that was all in their future. There was plenty of time for that.

Right then though, as the early morning sun began to shine through open blinds, the only thing that mattered was the way the curve of Lexa’s back fit into Clarke’s front as the blonde wrapped her arms around the brunette. The only thing that mattered was the way their fingers intertwined. The only thing that mattered was Lexa’s steady, calming heartbeat and the soft whisper of a kiss Clarke left on the back of her neck.

“Hey Clarke?”

“Mhm?” the other woman grumbled, snuggling closer to her girlfriend as Lexa turned in her grip to face her.

“Do you believe in soulmates?”

The blonde lifted her head and with tired eyes, smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you again for reading/kudoing/reviewing this fic, and with that I conclude yet another clexa fic (with another to be posted in the coming week)
> 
> thank again! much love
> 
> \- kris  
> commanderlexark.tumblr.com

**Author's Note:**

> get ready for this ride, it'll be great. also just bonus information - there's going to be a decent amount of true events in this fic that happened to me or people i know. the first of which was the prophecy. my mom was told in her early twenties that she would "marry someone her whole life, but had never met"...and she did. my dad. they had known each other their entire lives didn't meet until their dads set them up on a blind date
> 
> -kristen
> 
> madgirlbackhome.tumblr.com


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